by J. Scott Grimes
July 14, 2012. I’ve currently got ten stitches. They’re all over my body. One here, another one there. A hurried spray of stars. Maybe, from a great distance, they form a forgotten constellation. There just aren’t as many intrepid Greek sailors as there used to be. That makes it difficult to get a reliable confirmation. Lacking nautical, navigational, and natural skill, I dare not plot a map of my own. An expedient, horizontal dash just under my jaw bone on the left side. Two fraternal twins quite near each other on my lower back, sewn onto the calves of each leg two iodine-stained subtraction signs respectively, and the rest. Yesterday, they were still tender. This morning, I noticed how my gait had already adapted so as not to tug one out. It would be terribly thoughtless, immorally dismissive of generations of numb-thumbed and bowed-over immigrant tailors, to have, thanks to something as banal as muscle memory, undone such practiced and precise stitching. Healing has already started. I recognize the tingling. Tomorrow, it will grow into an irksome itch. The next day, like nothing ever happened.
J. Scott Grimes was born and raised in Virginia and has lived in Europe for 20 years. He currently resides in Germany, where he publishes mostly academic work from time to time.
Little Leaf Literary Journal 