Dragging my palm along the table’s edge.
I slide my hand against the grain.
A sliver breaks beneath my skin.
“What have you learned from your mistake?”
Look at the damage you’ve done by
moving before you think,”
Dad points out a crack
wide as a sunfish bone.
“Never go against the grain,” he says,
taking a needle from the cloth
he’d stapled to his bench.
He strikes a match, begins to tell
about the buck he found three days dead
with its lower jaw shot off.
I want to shut my eyes and hide my fear,
but my eyes are held in the tender gaze
of his finger’s shadow.
I watch him heat the needles’ point, “Don’t jerk,”
he says before he pricks my hand.
The trick is trusting his touch.
Focused on my hand, he talks
of that starved deer,
its tongue touching the grass.
He says, “If you wound an animal,
track it, find it,
put it out of its misery.”
Finding the sliver’s tip, he pulls it.
I bleed. He says, “Lick it,
a little pain never hurts.”
Replacing his needle, he returns
to his work, his shadow
sliding across the table.
The scratch of sandpaper
bears witness to the even grain.
A bead of my blood grows.
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