In a battered desk in the feed room of my grandfather’s store,
I came across a knife
my father had made – high school, I’m guessing,
metal shop – a dagger with a bone handle,
blade cut from a metal file.
It looked ugly, dangerous.
“Put that back,” he told me
when I brought it into the store. He hardly glanced
at the two-edged blade, good only for murder.
I was young, obedient. I put it back
but have held it years in my memory,
just as he must’ve held it
in that desk drawer of rusted sockets and wrenches –