How do you show you care?

 

The Gift by Li Young Lee

 

To pull the metal splinter from my palm 

my father recited a story in a low voice. 

I watched his lovely face and not the blade. 

Before the story ended, he’d removed 

the iron sliver I thought I’d die from. 

 

 

I can’t remember the tale, 

but hear his voice still, a well 

of dark water, a prayer. 

And I recall his hands, 

two measures of tenderness 

he laid against my face, 

the flames of discipline 

he raised above my head.

 

 

Had you entered that afternoon 

you would have thought you saw a man 

planting something in a boy’s palm, 

a silver tear, a tiny flame. 

Had you followed that boy 

you would have arrived here, 

where I bend over my wife’s right hand. 

 

 

Look how I shave her thumbnail down 

so carefully she feels no pain. 

Watch as I lift the splinter out. 

I was seven when my father 

took my hand like this, 

and I did not hold that shard 

between my fingers and think, 

Metal that will bury me,

christen it Little Assassin, 

Ore Going Deep for My Heart. 

And I did not lift up my wound and cry, 

Death visited here!

I did what a child does 

when he’s given something to keep. 

I kissed my father.

 

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/li-young-lee