Cut from the front of scalp back to the temple. Start where the tip of the widow’s peak might be, if you had one, following the hairline. Make sure the blade is sharp to pull through the skin with ease, though be careful to not let it slip in too deep. Holding your forehead down with one hand, pull the skin above it back slow, like peeling the plastic off the top of a container. Tools that may help: tweezers, scalpel, any of a variety of dentistry instruments you may be able to acquire, the tip of the blade itself. Peeled back, the skin may stay on its own or you can hold it in place or, most recommended, pin it back with some kind of clamp, hair pin, binder clip. Retrieve the small piece of metal or plastic or even paper you’ve been keeping though you never knew why. Place it against the exposed area. You may need to move it around until in place; when there is a pang of regret or forgetting, you’ll know how it fits. Fold the scalp back into place, reattaching as you best see fit. Don’t worry about the scarring or healing. It will have already happened.
I took a job as a mason, put my hands to work. Carried bricks, moving and stacking and breaking in half when needed. On breaks I rubbed my hands into them, sawing with the sharp edges and corners and slapping with the long, flat sides. I let the mixer have at them like part of the cement. At home after work, I never rinsed my hands clean, the mortar setting, soaking in, drying and cracking and turning my skin brittle. It melted in, the mortar, coursed through my hands like blood, and I began to feel new. I finally stopped thinking about what she’d said.
I gave my hands paper cuts, rope burns, cigarette and oven scars. I wanted to tear them apart, break them into as many pieces as they had bones, then again, before putting them back together like a puzzle.
I bought a weight bag and punched it until I bled. To help them heal, I wrapped my hands in berry vines I’d pulled from the ground by the side of the road. The thorns needled my palms and the berry juices mixed with my blood. Red trickled down my arms like spilled wine, dried like mortar.
Finished – after my fingers bent, if at all, in sharp and harsh angles; after knots raised and didn’t heal; after scars grew permanent and indistinguishable from the natural folds; after embedded gravel grew to look like knuckles and knuckles looked like any other part of my hand – I looked at my hands and they finally looked like they something that belonged to me.
I can’t hold small objects – shoelaces, zippers, necklace clasps. I wish I could again hold her hand. I wish I could pick up a piece of paper and a pen, write a note, then fold the paper into what I’d always promised I’d show her how to make. I look at my hands and wonder. If they’d always been like this, maybe she never would have let them go.
Remember the myth of looking directly into the sun. The milk cartons cut into a makeshift periscope. Remember your brothers and sisters having to turn away, their eyes too weak. Forget their fall, the push, the fact that that was the last time you saw them. Look up to the sun and ask if your strength is a gift or a curse. Push up, out of your nest, and fly toward it, past the caladrius, feeling for a brief moment a kinship you’ve missed, you’ve thought was gone, you’ve thought wasn’t possible. Feel the heat burn away your outer layer, as if a film had built up over time and you hadn’t even noticed, then tuck and fall. Plummet. Past the caladrius again, past others trying to follow its ascent, and crash into the water. Feel new, cleansed, reborn.