What Stays

It's smaller now.

The red around it has gone down,

the swelling decided it wasn't worth it,

but the splinter is still there,

a dark line under the skin of my palm,

a thing I can't quite see

unless I angle my hand

the way I've been doing

for a week.

The tweezers didn't work.

I pressed them in as far as they'd go,

tried to grip something

too small to grip,

tried to extract

what wanted to stay embedded.

So now I carry it.

I press on it sometimes,

just to feel it,

just to confirm it's still there,

that my body held onto it

the way it holds onto other things

that don't belong.

There's a small scar forming around it.

My body is making room.

My body is deciding

this is mine now,

this foreign thing

is part of the architecture,

and we'll just keep walking around

with this splinter

and pretend it doesn't change

the way the hand moves.