What Embeds

The neighbor thanked me at the curb. I said

of course, and drove home not knowing yet.

By the time I parked, the heel of my hand had spread

to pink—the skin already set

against something in there. I found it

in the bathroom light: a sliver, dark,

just below the surface. Tried it

with tweezers. No luck. The mark

of the neighbor's rotten fence post,

a piece of the fence that's at the curb now.

I tried four times. Five. The coast

of skin closed after each somehow,

patient, unimpressed.

A week now. I press the spot each night

to feel it answer. A small request

it honors. The flesh gone tight

around it. The body builds, I've read,

a wall of scar around what won't come out.

I know. I know. That's what I dread—

not the splinter. What the body does without

me.