Inklings Fall 2019

there will be something worth our
anxieties tomorrow
Jared Bruett
Steam
content warning: self-harm, blood, gore
Annie Eyre
Inklings Arts & Letters
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I told her that the day had been too hot, and our kitchen too warm,
and that’s why the knife slipped when I was chopping the apple and
the blade dipped into my skin and the top of my finger popped off,
cleanly, and rolled onto the floor. When David came into the kitchen,
his breath hot and quick, he told her that what he found crazy was that I
hadn’t made any noise at all. I just stared at the form of my left pointer
finger—no longer a finger—that was so wet and red and slick that he
said it was crazy that I was staring at it so quietly.
“No, not crazy,” he amended, looking at me. “It was brave.”
He said all this to the doctor, emphatically rubbing my right hand, my
normal hand.
I was quiet again. I kept looking at my left hand and the giant puffy
cloud that had taken the place of my pointer finger. I knew it was gauze,
and the two remaining thirds of my finger were still under there, but
still I wanted to think of it as a cloud with nothing underneath. In my
mind, at least, there was nothing solid under there. There was nothing
numb, bloody, incomplete.
The doctor turned to David and asked him to leave the room for a
moment because she had some questions she needed to ask me, alone.
Fall 2019
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“Of course,” he nodded and rubbed my pinkie finger and left the room.
Before he shut the door, I could tell he wanted to give me a reassuring
look, but I had to stare at the ground, instead, so my heart wouldn’t pour
out into the cloud on my hand, seeping everything onto the hospital bed.
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“Carrie,” the doctor said once the door had clicked shut, “We have to
ask, in cases like this, if there’s anything you need us to know. You said
your hand was warm from the heat of your apartment, and it slipped on
the knife because it was sweaty. I’m just having a hard time believing
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