Timber

The Poem

There is blood at the wrist.I missed it the first time.

This is the piece telling you something about yourself —about all of us —the way we stand in front of the person who is fallingand see the butterfly, see the chess piece,see the yellow jacket, see the hands reaching —

The hands reaching

and miss the blood at the wrist that was there the whole time,visible, present, unhidden,waiting for someone to look close enoughto see what was actually happeningwhile we were busy seeing everything else.

The blood at the wrist

This is what pain looks like in the people we love —right there, in the frame, in plain sight,in the detail we almost didn’t notice —

almost.