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The paper cut was nothing.

Just the edge of the envelope

catching my thumb as I opened the bill.

But I didn't move to get a bandage.

Just stood there and watched the blood

well up along my fingerprint

like it had always been meant to be there.

My mother had a bruise once.

I was ten. She called me into the kitchen

and showed me her arm without explanation.

Purple. Yellow at the edges. Healing wrong.

She pointed to it like it was evidence.

Like her own body was testifying against her.

Her voice was different that day.

Quieter. Like she was translating something

from a language I wasn't supposed to understand.

I asked her what happened.

She didn't answer. Just pulled her sleeve down

and went back to the dishes.

The blood on my thumb is following the line

of my fingerprint. A map.

A record.

The body keeping score

even when the mind decides to forget.

I wonder if my mother looked at her bruise

the way I'm looking at this cut.

If she watched it bleed and saw

something larger.

Something that had been bleeding

for longer than either of us knew how to name.