Keeping My Hand

Keeping My Hand

You put a saw to my arm and started sawing.
Stop, I said.
I can’t, you said. It’s hurting you isn’t it.
Yes.
It won’t hurt when I’m done.
I looked down
and saw that you seemed to be right;
I wasn’t even bleeding.
The skin was brown-yellow
and the cut was clean,
as if my arm was the trunk of a young tree.
Won’t it hurt? I asked, to be sure.
No. I’m helping you. You have a paper cut on your finger.
Yes, I do, I said.
The small cut hurt even more than the saw.
I’m getting rid of it, you said.
But I like it.
You like a paper cut?
I had meant I like my arm.
It’s better than a numbness or nothingness
of no-arm, no-hand, no-cut, I said.
What’s wrong with that? Now it will never hurt again.
It’s a paper cut.
That’s the worst pain there is, you said.
True.
The saw was sliding softly
between my bicep and shoulder muscle.
But I don’t mind, I said.
Don’t you?
The sawing stopped.
I’d rather write sloppily and painfully
than never write again.
The saw fell away from my arm like an overripe fig
and, thoughtfully, you walked away.