Jeremy, you should have stayed.
Aruba, Jamaica, oh I’d want to take you
to the garage where you lost your finger.
The poor thing. The parting so quick
we didn’t see the divide, only the edges that formed
as the door scissored through your first knuckle,
truncating forever the power of your point.
Forgive me, the tip was almost cute
as it superballed through the room,
our mouths opened wide as catchers’ mitts
until the nail stuck, uncertain, to cement,
oil scent mixing with blood on the coil.
It was an accident, darling.
You couldn’t have known that when your index finger
grazed that elephantine door hinge
it’d leave it in pieces. Luckily, we were six.
Our bodies in fits of ribbon.
I tied the loosed tip back to your knuckle
with string from your father’s toolbox.
I tied it backwards.
You didn’t say a word. You were so brave.
Afterward, you even let me hold my handiwork.
For that, maybe I could love you like liking,
or maybe like falling asleep after breakfast. Maybe I
was happy with just our hands holding,
the harvest moon of that errant nail
pressed coolly to the base of my pointer.
We were six, and had no fear of our bits, couldn’t imagine
that parts could break off or settle into scars.
Now that we are older and have stopped growing
and I can’t remember the words to Kokimo
or what we ever spoke,
I wonder if the pre-surgery piece I held in my hot little hand
can forgive me now
for not leaving it to its fractal charm.
Error free and perfectly useless.
A souvenir you could have boxed away,
lost, rediscovered, lost again.
Jeremy, I must admit that sometimes
I envision a new romance
where your finger, deaf to the pop surprise
of tunneled bone and midget heft,
declares an independence from the incomplete grasp
of its parent hand,
loves the loss that birthed it,
takes a new name—James, or Jimmy,
and grows a whole new boy.
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