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giving a strip of flesh

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

I awoke at 4 or 5 this morning with another bloody migraine; soon I'd be mopping blood from the floor. It happened because my eyesight becomes diminished with a migraine. Also because my brain gets fried.

I missed the final step of the small set of stairs that divides the front and back halves of the apartment. I didn't miss it outright, but my heel slid off the step, and I fell down to the floor as you do. My heel came down hard immediately in front of the step, and my momentum carried me forward. As my heel came off the ground, the rough bottom of the step tore a ragged strip of skin off my heel, about 1cm wide and three long.

I patched it up with some of our bandages and tape. And so I found myself in the pre-dawn gloom, visually and mentally impaired, mopping dots of blood from the floor. It wasn't until lunch time, when I was feeling better, that I noticed that the strip of skin was still hanging from the step.