Two figures, close, and she's holding the knife — low, half-hidden, the face calm above it. I worked the image by hand until the embrace and the blade stopped reading as separate things. That's the premise: tenderness and threat aren't opposites here, they're the same gesture seen from different distances. The one being held to is the one in danger, and the holding is what makes the danger possible. The painting doesn't resolve it because the situation doesn't. Ouch is the sound the body makes before the mind has decided what happened.