The drawer caught my thumbnail backward

The drawer caught my thumbnail backward.

Not the kind of pain you cry out for—

just the specific shock of your own hand

doing the wrong thing at the wrong angle.

I pulled it free and there was a split,

thin and vertical, running up

from the nail bed like a scar

that isn't one yet. Isn't anything yet.

I keep looking at it.

Tilt my finger under the lamp—

the light finds the crack and makes it

seem worse than it is.

Put my hand down flat and it disappears.

The split is there. The damage is real.

But the light determines whether I see it.

I reach for the same cabinet every morning.

The same drawer, the same mug.

My body does this without asking my permission,

without checking for obstacles.

In six months the nail will grow out.

I'll trim it and never think about this again.

For now there's this vertical line

that I don't remember making,

that I'm making

every time I reach that way.