we had a steak knife that we lost in the impossibly narrow chasm between the counter and the refrigerator. it was nothing special: not particularly sharp, serrations worn to smoothness, the plastic grip probably melted from times when we left it too close to the pan of frying tofu. i've thought so much about this steak knife the last four days. i imagine seppuku aimed at the heart, slowly, easing in, stainless steel against the valves to my left ventricle - as if there were nerves down there, as if i could feel it! and the feeling of it just like a breeze. i don't know why this image gives me comfort.

don't you call the wellness center: it's the ideation not of suicide but of surgery, a precise cut that'll remove the offending bits. i find that topical analgesics don't do the work of the surgeon's scalpel. spiritual healers just voodoo economists, acupunture just a underenthusiastic version of just what the doctor ordered.

now this knife is, in my mind, solace. so i have dreams that like bells' tolls attack sharp and decay over the course of days, and all the relief i can think of is just holding the steak knife against a wall and leaning my chest into it. and again the feeling of it just like a breeze. i just wait for medical technology to advance to such levels that the effects of this selective self-surgery match my expectations for it. i think i need to throw up two pounds of vegetarian "peking spare ribs." right. now.