the years of l'entre deux guerres

different ways to mean nothing

my shop teacher held his eyelid down
with one broken pencil finger
to show the blood vessels that clustered
after sparks licked his eye
leaving a blistered red pucker on his retina
and impressed that the class learn through other’s mistakes
but I was only scared of his red eye
of his cigarette breath and black grease fingers
and held onto the scent of the cedar wood in the closet behind me
the smell of the pet stores and the rabbits I held under my chin there

my grandmother filled the silence with crooks of her recliner
then placed a hand over her bangs
this is the scar from when your pap flipped the truck
she plucked the needle from the thread and dug
under her nails
glass sweated through my forehead during the fifties
sixties and seventies
she asked me didn't i ever wonder about that scar
i lied and said yes
she looked at me and smiled
and i shifted in my seat and studied my knuckles

i think of this as i grip the tiles in the shower
and try to not listen to my own bones
unraveling or what any of this should mean to me
held only between threads of water and skin