A knife made of broken mirror is entirely blade and damages any hand holding it. It leaves left over bad luck on the wound’s sticky edge with flakes of silver leaf. A knife with a paper blade is sharp enough to skin soul from spirit, light from lens. Fire releases its edge to the sky. A shank made from a half pair of broken sewing scissors remembers snipping threads as an intimate act of coming together. Now it does nothing more than follow its own point through anything offered and still hopes to find its missing half on the other side of everything. Fifteen knives outline the magician’s wife by the end of his final trick. Blindfolded, he doesn’t even see her as he seems to heave each one. Watching only where there may be blood, the audience doesn’t see that the knives never really left his hand. The knife that sliced Eve’s apple. Imagine her dirty blunt thumb holding it to the polished blade as she offered to share. It was the very first knife. It meant well.

Lee Potts has work in several journals including Rust + Moth, 8 Poems, and Sugar House Review. He’s associate editor for poetry at Barren Magazine. He lives near Philadelphia. On Twitter he’s @LeePottsPoet.

Photo by Reza Hasannia on Unsplash

<<             >>