Left Pointer Finger Relearns her Place in the Scheme of Poetry

Can she type now? Having lost her outer corner to a paper cutter, not unlike a jaunty, tilted beret lifted off by sharp wind, she donned flesh colored bandages a month, forgot how to work unencumbered by pain, accustomed now to pointing up like a tea pinky, up and out of the way.

(Her beret: a bit of faded pink me-jerky topped by white feather of nail. Grotesque little hat! I can’t throw you away! The day we parted, I dreamed of tossing you into roadkill in hopes a Sangre de Cristo raven would take you in and up like a Tibetan vulture’s prayer. But still you sit on a bedside shrine! Abject object of attachment! )

This poem, the first since then, is practice to get her moving again. Her fingerprintless tip, in pins and needles of severed nerve sleep, tries to remember an old dream. She doesn’t hurt anymore.

(Middle finger–still protecting her little sister–strains to hold back on the keyboard, slowly learns to step aside and let her walk again.)

Despite dried tension—the clear-scabbed, tick-sized fact clinging still to the middle of what is raw, she insists: Let me do it! I can type! Right thumbnail bumps her on her way to B. The little cringe passes quickly, whispers: best to keep a honeyed bandage on her one more day till all is finally thin, pink baby skin. What a miracle! Our edges crawl to close around a deep rose center.

December 15, 2017, exactly one month later