Glass Thorn

When I was small

I splintered a jar and didn’t see it

Glass sank into my heel

A thorn in the paw of a mouse

I rubbed at the pinprick, and screamed

At my crimson fingerprints

Once my mother had bandaged

My newly scarred heel

And my father had searched

The treacherous floorboards

I was allowed back into the kitchen

To confront my thorn

It was smaller than I’d thought

Small like me, I wondered

How it could draw so much blood

I thought later—it must be good to be razor-edged

In the moment, I only lamented

The loss of applesauce

I spent years reading

I’d heard it made you sharp

I became a boy of glass

Spiderwebbed by my own design

If you were close enough to touch

I was close enough to cut

I cut at boys bearing baseball bats

Who struck with far less grace

I cut and pasted sheets of paper and stolen skin

Over the places of myself where a person was supposed to be

I sheared bits of myself off, too

The ones that didn’t make the cut

Until one day I realized

That glass is only sharp when it’s broken

Friends helped blow a new shape for me

Though I’d been tinted indelibly

I’d spent so much time looking at my edges

I never saw how lovely stained glass can be