Every cut is a bleeding thorn,
every breath is a spread of fingers.
The ear records all its silences.

Lose a hand and it goes to the trash heap,
lose an ear and everyone will think of Van Gogh.

In the landfill
the hand discovers fire,
it discovers how to conquer the rats,
how to drive,
how to see the light,
how to play
as a child in the soft sand,
how to think to its advantage,
how to grow beyond
touch and feel,
how to taste the apple,
how to hear
the silence of the din,
how to love,
love itself,
the world,
the universe-

to think of itself
as something other
than a horror concept,
to think of itself
as a piano virtuoso,
to think it’s worth a body,
(not worth the bother of a body),
worth a companion five fingers,
(unworthy of mating with other digits)
all while ******* a doll’s head.

Thinking it’s worth a *****,
its palm forming a ******
but ultimately deciding
it’s not worth
the extra useless appendage
and the lifelines-


tasting the rain and discovering
it’s not an umbrella
just a receptacle to hold one.

It gets soggy, wrinkled.
It gets sick.
It gets cancer.
It loses its fingers
one by one.
Its creases wither.
It dies
and blows away
in the wind.

Its body mourns
its phantom limb,
stretches it new
mechanical appendages
and moves on.