thumb raze at first i thought the thing had been amputated. but that wasn't right. it was bent to the left and sewn into itself. it was something slavic. a way of being branded with a pocket of your own flesh. a tennis player whose parents owned a football team swore by an optician i'd seen peddling contact_lenses in youtube ads. he sat me down in a dentist's chair and ripped a thin steel rod out from under the nail bed. i didn't even know it was there. "this might sting a little," he said, removing the stitches without numbing the soft tissue they trapped. giving my body back to me. i told him he was a magician. "you'll want to take it easy on the thumb for a while," he said. "don't treat it like it isn't there. but don't overdo it." i moved it around. it felt stiff. i expected that. otherwise it was fine. all the mobility i'd come to rely on was still there. i didn't think of doing anything with my hand. i thought of the stairwells i haunted in high_school at lunchtime. i guess that's what you do when the loneliest digit on your non-dominant hand gets out of jail. you remember what it was to be a teenage ghost. 221205 what's it to you? who go blather from