The Other Hand

How did I end up with a gun in my hand? Did I carve it from the bones of surrender, sand down every prayer until it resembled a trigger, or did the world press it into my palm, cold and irrevocable as prophecy? I can’t recall which was first: the wound or the instinct to bleed before being cut. To train a body to recoil before joy has the chance to arrive is the oldest violence I know. to make the nerves into sentries, to teach the spine to bow toward catastrophe, to convince the heart that every unopened door is a more elegant mouth for ruin. Soon enough, expecting less feels reasonable. Ceilings creak with arthritic patience. Hallways learn your gait like a bruise being taught to speak. Doorknobs remember exactly how tightly to turn. Even wallpaper separates at the seams before you do. By then, survival has the odor of inheritance, of something passed hand to hand without benediction. Are you a captive of preordained illusions? Or do you tear at the veil, split open the seam of what is, until only what ought to have been remains, thin as a moth’s confession, bright with the terror of its own undoing? Maybe fate is nothing more than repetition performed with such fidelity it begins to wear the face of law. Possibly free will is the moment someone finally stops calling the wound a map and asks, with both hands emptied of prayer, whose fingerprints were already on the gun.