Knife

Holding a knife, or imagining it holds a knife, my blood goes
to sleep in my fist. Stare at it now with my eyes, the excessively
alert and troubled eyes of a deaf man at a child's recital. And
let me tell you something, something alarming: when I stare into
it long enough, inevitably the moment when I no longer recognize
it arrives. This is the moment when the blood unknowingly offers
itself to be slaughtered; when cuts can occur like a slip of the tongue;
when a little blood could billow in a glass of water and impart to it the
disappearing taste of my own life.