“Be careful where you bleed !…”
Story of my life, in that instruction.
I mean it was a completely insignificant scrape, just on my pinky knuckle. Simply awkwardly placed at the joint.
Of course I have no idea how I sustained this injury (drink was NOT involved), my first hint is that there are red marks (jam? tomato sauce?) on the work surface, (no it is blood! I should know , I’ve seen enough of it), and so I look for suspicious blue steaks, bleeding pork chops, or even a black pudding, none of which are usual inhabitants of our (mostly) vegetarian kitchen.
I do casually glance at the palms of my hands, (but cut is on the outside) and briefly check for head injuries/nose bleeds/random facial incisions, but it is only when I return to a further bloody smear by my lap top that I actually notice the blood on my right hand.
Not unaturally, I go to rinse my hand and identify the source, which involves crossing another room, and thus elliciting the admonition to be careful about where I am bleeding.
Note the disturbing implied absence of any worry (or even surprise) about the fact that I AM bleeding.
Turns out I’ve taken the top layer of skin (very cleanly) off a patch of knuckle. The surprising parts of this are that I was completely unaware of the injury, and the neatness of it. This speaks to my inner detective of an unexpectedly sharpe edge somewhere.
Accessing my personal “cold case records,” the likely culprits are; shard of broken glass, (that old nemesis), an exposed raw metal edge, or an incident involving cheese grater.
Unfortunately this identity parade does not yield any good culprits, with “shard” and “grater” sharing the “wasn’t anywhere near there gov”, alibi. Metal edge looks guilty, but I can’t locate the actual weapon….and, I have to concede this is very neat work, not his style at all.
Switching to black and white, I don my fedora – we rewatched “Maltese Falcon” last night, just fab – (although these days I might be closer to playing “the Fatman” than “Sam Spade”).
Somewhere in this city there’s a criminally sharp edge,
and it’s hiding,
well I can wait.
Some day it’s going to slip up, and when it does, I’m going to bleed all over it (with great care).
Next week on IaDL : live from the Burns unit, I don’t doubt
Dalmallyfest the Asylum 