There’s a new line on my left palm
from thumb almost to wrist. Knife slip.
Part of it bled but the rest is dry riverbed
as if I’d run out of blood, as if the drought
and famines had come, as if the ocean
receded and kept receding, rows of beach houses
left inland and dry. I was cutting an avocado
at a campsite in California, which wouldn’t
be exciting except the avocados there cost
25 cents, which is enormously exciting
to those on my coast. So this line has joined
the other lines on my palm, my heart line
longer than life, the warble of fate,
future in a skinfold, past tucked in
the simian crease, the stubborn head,
the planets in my hand. Below this,
veins that appear more blue each year,
the skin thinning, the lungs filling a little less
and now there’s another line to consider,
perhaps it is my Swiss Army line
or Who Taught You to Hold a Knife line
or You Think That’s Bad, You’ve Got
an Artery About an Inch Away line
and the new line pointing to the artery,
the wrist’s soft pulse so loved by the suicidal
in their warm baths, they must be
more committed than I, with more
on their minds than inexpensive avocados
and a little boy looking on, “Mommy
did you cut yourself?” and I dropped
the knife and the fruit, luckily not on my foot
because I wasn’t certain which
had wounded me, so fast and sure
it might have been the avocado lashing out
and I stared at them both, pinching shut
this new open part of me, this new access point
with blood scarletting in the air, what joy
to be blood escaped and sun-filled at last,
satiated, set free, and to distract my son
I thrust both hands under the picnic table
and said “Did you know that knife is one
of those funny words that starts
with a silent k, like knight?” And he said
“You mean knight like a warrior knight
or like the night when it’s dark,”
and for a long moment I held
one bloodied hand in one uncut hand,
and for the life of me couldn’t remember.
©
lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two kids and teaches travel writing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a contributing editor at the literary magazine Bateau. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Adirondack Review, Apple Valley Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, Memorious, PANK, RATTLE, Slipstream, and other journals.
Skolfield’s poem “If We'd Cried, I Would Have Mentioned It” also appears in this issue.
