Farewell to Winter, Farewell to My Fingertip

I lost my fingertip in January while carrying a wooden boat across icy ground. When I slipped, the gunwale came down on my hands. About a half inch of my middle finger lay in the dead grass, which might not sound like a lot until you look at the geography of a hand—the cut went to the white crescent setting in the cuticle. I wish I could accurately describe the feeling of picking up the fingertip—how immediately protective I was, holding it in my palm, cupping it like I’d found a songbird egg; how I felt it was both numb and not numb because it was then an object, not part of my body anymore. It was of my left hand—my writing and painting hand.

“We have to go,” I said to my friend carrying the other side of the boat.

The surgeon couldn’t sew it back on. Before I was put under, he said if he couldn’t graft the skin from the lower part of the finger, he’d bend the finger and attach the open end to my palm, cleave it free later. I woke up to it not sewed to my palm but erect with a bulb of bandages, an aluminum plate apparently shoved under the nail bed. 

Weeks of dreaming animals were chewing my hands. Waking up one night