Palliativity 130: The Blade Itself

I remember being given my first knife at the age of three. My parents, grandparents and I were on our annual apple picking trip to the north, over the Wisconsin border.

When my father handed me the neon-green plastic object, it took me a moment to realize what I was holding in my cupped hands. I thumbed the cool blade and marveled at the curved glimmer, recognizing the silver flash from the samurai films I watched with dad narrating the subtitles to me:

“Is that guy gonna be okay?”, “Yeah, his arm will grow back…”

• • •

I’m fifteen years old and with my highschool friends wandering downtown Chicago past curfew on a Friday night. Generally I was the only non-white-guy in my crew so I always fell back and walked slow. When we’d hit a bad street, I’d scan the shadows and thumb the knife in my pocket, channeling Mifune and Eastwood: flexing my fingers and ready to draw…

In my mind, I hoped that the would-be bad men of the night would see me stalking after my friends and figure that I had this heist covered— Find your own mark.

This lot’s been claimed.

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