Three injuries, no mirror

I did not look. That is the thing I keep coming back to. I drove two hours with blood running into the corner of my eye and down my neck and I did not look once. The rear-view mirror was right there. I think I was afraid I would not recognize whoever was looking back, and I think I was more afraid I would.

Joubert took half the Hendrik order. At his undercut rate. I was on the shed ladder with a gravid cobra in the bag and he told me through the window like he was telling me the weather. I have been undercut by men who thought I would not remember. I remember all of them. I remember the rate.

The staple opened the cheek to the muscle. I know this because I put the curved needle into it at the kitchen counter tonight and felt the layer give. Six stitches. I counted because counting is what I do when my hands want to shake. The needle is sterile. My hands were not. I used the alcohol wipe from the kit and did not think about it.

The cobra is gravid. She is in the rack and I am in the bed and we are both carrying things we did not plan for. Her load will come out when it is ready. Mine is two days and a half-order and a cheek I will not look at until the fog lifts.

My father did not leave notebooks. I know what he left. Tonight, on the pillow, with the staple pulling and the fog pressing, I know what I am leaving too. A woman who fell off a shed and stitched her own face and told no one. That is the kind of silence that grows a notebook of its own.