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I cut off my left hand. I cut off my left hand and placed it in a hole in the trunk of an elm tree. In the trunk of the elm tree, my hand slept for a year. After the year, it woke. It woke and began living on its own. Sometimes, on its own, it crawls tarantulan across the autumn leaves. It is looking for something. Across the autumn leaves, I sometimes hear it from inside my cottage. Inside my cottage, my wife has been sleeping for ten years. She hasn’t woke up; I don’t think she will. My left hand walks on its fingertips. My left hand is looking for something. It still wears my wedding band. My wedding band still has the splatter of congealed blood where I cut of my left hand. My wife hasn’t taken a breath but I know she’s still dreaming. She’s still dreaming and so am I. I watch my left hand scurry around in the yard below, trying to get in, trying to come inside. I don’t let it. It scratches like a mutt on the back door. Listen: if falling in love is what you want, be prepared to lose everything. Love commands of us tokens of proof, commands for us to sacrifice more than just what we want to offer. It commands us give everything. I could not. I cut off my left hand. Tonight, on our anniversary, I let it in. It skitters past me. Climbs the bed sheets. Lays down in the spaces between the fingers of my sleeping wife’s right hand.

Tiny Confession

I grew up believing I would one day be as tall as my father who I’d never met. He’s deceased by way of being mauled by a bear. My full height as of today, my eighteenth birthday: the exact same as the African violet my mother keeps on the coffee table in the living room. I’m the same height as the wingspan of a Luna moth. My ulna is the length of a tooth pick. And I am supposed to become something noticeable? I sometimes believe my soul was put into the wrong body and I got the one that belonged to a house cat. Somewhere a cat is walking around on two legs in the city, licking underneath its armpits, and I’m stuck here: in a house by the bay, with a normal sized mother, and no chance at seeing the world outside. My bed sits on the windowsill looking out over the water that sometimes remains placid as though murky glass. I read a lot. I have to read by walking over the page like someone might trace their finger along the sentence. If you think you have it rough, imagine being unable to write about your life because you are too small to hold a pencil. I use matchsticks. My handwriting is illegible from five foot seven in the air. My eyes are too small to observe the entirety of the world. One thing I do know is that, if there is a God, if and when I go to heaven (a virgin, so quiet a sinner, so unnoticeable a threat) He won’t see me coming. If you believe yourself unable to live the life you’re in, imagine having a voice others have to bend over in order to hear.

Pandora

I have this box full of velveteen quiet. It’s rather large: large enough to fit a man inside. I put my most treasured things inside this box. It’s a box that acts like a door, but to where I do not know. I put plenty of things inside of it, things that I love but no longer need. My fists for example. My incisor gleam. My childish ambition. My pump-action trigger finger. My future wedding vows and rings. My hope for a better world. Anything that goes in the box disappears. Eventually, the box gets cluttered, heavy. I try to move it and it topples over, unlatches, and, instead of it all crashing out, a small knife falls out. It is grey like winter. It is grey like God’s invisible beard. It is grey like dead meat. I pick it up. It is unreasonably dense. Soon, I realize this is everything I put in the box before, only it clumped together to become dangerous. I am rolling up my sleeve. I don’t think I need this anymore. Tell me: what else should I remove myself of in order to be lovable.