Cut

Slicing lemon to go with my lunch: the knife dug deep into the tip of my middle finger. True story: when I was ten, I cut my thumb while slicing carrots, fainted from the sight of the blood, hit my head on the radiator, and ended up in intensive care with a severe concussion.

I was scared it would happen again. I flung myself down the stairs and pounded on fellow work-from-homer J’s front door.

“I HAVE AN EMERGENCY” I cried through the door. He wrapped paper towel around it and held my arm aloft as I crumpled to my knees. 

“You’re OK,” he said. “It’s only a small cut.”

“But it is a key cello-playing finger!” I whimpered.

“You don’t play the cello,” he said.

“I used to,” I pointed out.

Antiseptic, plaster: a few minutes later, he sent me home, with a recommended poem to help me get over the trauma: Cut, by Sylvia Plath.