The Bread Was Not the Problem

August eighth. I want to say upfront that I know how to use a knife. I have been using knives for my entire adult life, and I have even, since sometime around 2018, been making breakfasts that require a level of actual attention. The bread was not the problem. The problem was that I was moving too fast. It is a Saturday and I had nowhere to be, which is somehow the condition most likely to produce this particular kind of injury: the one you get when you are rushing for no reason at all.

The thing about cutting your finger first thing in the morning is that everything stops. Not dramatically, nobody called anyone, but there is a four-minute window at the kitchen sink where the day just holds. I stood there holding a folded paper towel around my right index finger, looking at Gerald, whose trailing vine was doing its slow thing along the shelf below, entirely unbothered. Gerald has put out three new leaves this year and has opinions about none of my life decisions, which I find increasingly restful.

the crime scene

At some point I took a selfie. I don't know why exactly, except that the expression I was making felt accurate in a way that felt worth noting, the very specific tiredness of being the cause of your own small interruption. I looked approximately how I felt: fine, a little flattened, standing in a cream sweater at eight in the morning with a paper towel for a bandage. The loaf is still on the cutting board. I did eventually finish making breakfast. I even ate it. I did not photograph it, because some things are just for the morning and not for the record, and also my finger was wrapped in tape by then and I was done making decisions.

Gerald witnessed everything and said nothing

It's August. This is the kind of thing August does, it makes you move fast inside slow days, and then your finger finds the edge of the knife before your brain catches up. I've been making the same breakfast three or four times a week now and this is the first time anything has gone wrong with it, so I'm choosing to read that as a reasonable track record rather than a warning sign. Gerald thinks I'm fine. Gerald is always thinking something.