It was not the first time Sunday found himself in front of the bathroom mirror, a porcelain box of piercing tools set out in front of him, a gleaming silver needle in his hand. His left helix was one of the places he hadn’t pierced, golden jewelry scattered throughout the alabaster planes of his face. When he was in his freshman year of university, his father had belittled and chastised him for the piercing he had marred his eyebrow with. In junior year of high school, Robin had come close to tears the very first time she had witnessed him with two little spikes he drove through his left wing. The only person who had never commented was you, his lover for years. You had seen his collection of jewelry grow over the times, each new ring or stud a mark of a failure.

Perhaps it was unseemly of him to obtain as many piercings as he did— the side lip ring he'd gotten years ago mocked him, pristine and blinding if he dared meet the gaze of his shameful reflection. Each one served as a reminder of his inadequacies, the pain of the process and the pain of the healing like a prophecy. He was sullied, blemished, his left wing always heavier than his right.

His newest sin was, as always, an imperfection. An inability to uphold and a failure to protect. As the concertmaster of his university’s orchestra, his duty to the musicians was to make sure order was maintained at all costs. Yet the performance he delivered was subpar, dirtied, riddled with mistakes.

This was not what he had been appointed as first desk for, and certainly not what he expected of himself, as the individual shouldered with the burden of raising melodies in harmony.

So he drew blood, the sterile needle slipping easily through his ear and into the cork he had placed behind. The stabbing pinch he felt was nothing compared to his past errors, the burn dying down then resurfacing once he inserted the eye-shaped stud he had chosen.

The bathroom door creaked open as he snapped on the backing, your worried face reflecting like a phantom in his mirror.