o my humunculous

Two days ago, when the freeze was here in full blast, I went about cooking to keep warm. I concocted a recipe for a delicious pot of split pea soup (now totally devoured) that I began in the morning and cooked through to perfection into the evening. It was excellent. That night, I put on a pot of steel cut oats for breakfast the next morning. It takes about 30 minutes to cook oatmeal in its non-instant form, and when you grate fresh nutmeg and cinnamon into it, it fills the apartment with a sleepy, incredible aroma all night long. It'll be cool in the morning, so you just have to re-heat for a few minutes and then off you can go to the first day of school, bright and shiny.

So, in any case, I had these two green apples sitting in the fruit bowl, and I thought it would be a good idea to slice them up and add them to the boiling water to mix in with the oats. Isn't there an instant oatmeal flavoring called "green apples and cinnamon"? It sounded like something you'd see in a television commercial, where everyone is warm and protected from the early morning gloom. As I cut into the first apple with a recently-sharpened knife, my aim was not true, and I sliced right through the tip of my thumb, which didn't really hurt (at first) but produced a lot of blood. In fact, I bled all over the apple slices and they were stained a weird pinkish color but, you know what?, I added them to the oatmeal anyway, and then went and bandaged myself up. As for the blood-oatmeal, Hank and I both ate it the next morning and, since you couldn't tell, I didn't even bother to mention it. (Surprise!)

This morning, the thumb is pretty much healed, although still a little sore. The flap of skin has come off, and there is an incredible dent at the tip of the digit, where it used to round itself out into completion. It's weird for me to look at and, for this reason, I've been reciting the following (hilarious) poem in my head:

Cut (by Sylvia Plath, 1962)

What a thrill --
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge

Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls

Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz.

A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.

Whose side are they on?
O my
Humunculous, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill

The thin
papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man --

The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when

The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence

How you jump --
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.