Basilisk
After he broke my little finger, snapping the bone
to make me let go of my phone, it swelled by half
& the ligament pulled tight, leaving the finger curved
inward like a claw. The middle knuckle froze, useless
for typing. Gloves were out of the question. No health
insurance then so I didn’t get it fixed. For years I kept
my left hand balled into a fist, hoping that no one
would notice the claw, the knuckle turned to stone.
When anyone did, I’d tell a story about being jumped
by a stranger on a street one night. No one questioned it.
I even bragged that I had put up a struggle & held onto
the phone, as if I’d been brave. This week I tell the story
to the therapist working on my finger, stretching the ligament,
prying the claw open. The knuckle is still frozen but she’s
determined. She dips my hand in hot paraffin, pulls off
the glove of wax & stretches my finger, presses it down
with heavy weights. It hurts, almost as much as it did
that night, but she holds my hand as she does it, the first time
anyone has held it since he did. I want to tell her
that he wasn’t a stranger, that it wasn’t on the street,
that he’d held my hand other times, too, & it never hurt
except that once. I want to tell her who he was, but that
would be telling her who I was. Instead I ask if she’s ever
heard of a basilisk, an ancient monster that looks at its prey
& turns it into stone. A basilisk looked at my hand, I tell her,
& see what happened? She says at least it was just a finger.
Kevin Nance is a writer and photographer in Lexington, Kentucky. His two collections of haiku and photographs are EVEN IF (University of Kentucky Arts in HealthCare, 2020) and MIDNIGHT (Act of Power Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in The North American Review, Willawaw Journal, Poet Lore, Pegasus, Cumberland Poetry Review and other magazines. His photography has been exhibited in Chicago, Portland, and Lexington. His arts journalism has appeared in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, Poets & Writers Magazine and other publications. He's the host of Out & About in Kentucky, an LGBTQ+ radio show and podcast.