Two punctures on my left palm are the fault of the spines of two different rockfish.
I am a fishmonger, and my hands are wounded as often as they are not. I am kissed by knives, tricked by oysters, and made swollen and sore by the spines of fish. I ought to tell you what I think of gods and of sacrifice, but for now let me tell you that I know precisely what the gods of the seas from which I pull my livelihood demand. Beings of liquid and of hunger and of salt, they want the oldest and the simplest and the most obvious of things: my sweat, my tears, and my blood. So with hands constantly besieged, it seems strange that I ever find meaning in it. I know little of palmistry, and my ignorance lends it an air of mystery and certainty that things that I understand better might lack. And so sometimes, very rarely, my hand bleeds, and I feel in the wound the sense that something is being overwritten. The lines carved anew, destiny yields as I make a choice.