A Breach

Eliyahu Hanavi has a white beard, rides a white bike, and wears a white cap with the brim torn.

“Never have I seen anyone who so wants to be alone,” he told me suddenly. I hadn’t seen him arrive on his white bike.

Startled, I glared a fuck-off at him, but he caught it in the palm of his hand and examined it closely.

“Never have I seen anyone so content in their own solitude,” he told me again.

“Please let me solide,” my curt nod responded. And now I scowled daggers at him.

He seized one deftly, flipped it around, and stabbed me on the middle finger that I’d foreborne from holding up. I started back in surprise, and flipped it up to examine the wound, while he rode off along the seashore, whistling.

I add it to my list of injuries. 
For I am bleeding from multiple places:

A hangnail,

A blister on my left ankle,

A nearly-cured scab on my right knee,

The place I flossed too hard last night,

And a million other wounds, invisible now, but quietly opening me to the world.

I tell a student, “don’t cut,” but sometimes I am claustrophobic in my own skin.

Sometimes when I have stumbled

Or walked into a wall again

Or crunched down on my own tongue

So that it cannot give me away,

I examine the breach with pleasure—

Now, now, the world will know me and I, it.

Even prophets can be mistaken.