Three more rounds after

I ran three rounds with a centimetre cut above my eye. Blood in the sweatband. Jules had the kit open before I noticed my glove was wet. Danny waved it off. I didn't stop. I told myself it was discipline. It wasn't. It was the same thing that put me in a hole at twenty-two. My body opens and I keep going. That is the whole disease.

I looked at the cut in the mirror and I liked it. The bruise was already yellowing by five. The skin held. I liked that too. There's a thing I won't say out loud — I liked having a visible mark from today. Not the shoulder. Not the card on the fridge. Something on my face that says I was here and I didn't stop.

Zoe asked about the cut. I said it's nothing. I said it without thinking. The full version doesn't get sent, even to her. I told her about the post — my name above Voss's, broadcast slot, corner names listed. I let her hear the part that sounds like progress. I didn't tell her about the buckle, how close it sat, that I finished with Vaseline above my brow.

Lou was right. Three days. The fax. The corner named. I drove home with the corner named. I keep saying that phrase in my head. Yesterday I was a man who got to keep his job. Today I am a man with a corner. The math hasn't changed. Twenty-two to thirty-one. The water didn't give back. But the order on the post is mine.

The AIS envelope is still on the counter. I walked past it to make a late lunch. I didn't touch it. Tomorrow I'll walk past it again. I'm saving it for when I'm allowed to feel something about it.