First Stitches

by Frank J. Tassone · 7 December 2017

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Haibun

I run in the day care center’s playground. Somewhere past the slide, the jungle gym and some swings, I slip and fall. My left hand thumps hard against the ground.

I stand up. The hand throbs. I turn it over. Blood covers my palm and runs down my wrist. I scream. A day-care attendant — and Mom — run over.

A Phelps Memorial Hospital emergency room doctor gives me my first stitches. After I come home, I lie on the plaid-upholstered couch in our wood-paneled family room. Looking at my white-bandaged hand, I moan over and over.

fingernail-width scar
putting aside another
childish thing

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Photo by Gaddafi Rusli on Unsplash

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Tags: Hospital pain parent scar stitches

Frank J. Tassone

Frank J. Tassone lives in New York City's "back yard" with his wife and son. He fell in love with writing after he wrote his first short story at age 12 and his first poem in high school. He began writing haiku and haibun seriously in the 2000s. His haikai poetry has appeared in Failed Haiku, Cattails, Haibun Today, Contemporary Haibun Online, Contemporary Haibun, The Haiku Foundation and Haiku Society of America member anthologies. He is a contributing poet for the online literary journal Image Curve, and a performance poet with Rockland Poets. When he's not writing, Frank works as a special education high school teacher in the Bronx. When he's not working or writing, he enjoys time with his family, meditation, hiking, practicing tai chi and geeking out to Star Wars, Marvel Cinema and any other Sci-Fi/Fantasy film and TV worth seeing.