Keeper

Wood

67 Wood I pressed the side of my head to the table and heard your voice vibrate the grains of pine—as if love needed a medium, some common substance to travel through. Even the splinter: you held my foot in both hands to free the shard of redwood tunneling toward bone. The foot, accustomed to carpet and pavement, the dim interior of shoes: it felt a little shy, turned up to air, the sterilized tweezers and needle; a little glad for the world that works its way in in spite, or because, of the sting, the throb, the humming that rides the looped highway of blood up from that glimmer of pain, sadness shifting like the thinning of fog, in which the edge of one tree comes clear. ...