Symmetry

Jesse’s left arm came back hairy that spring, freed from his signed cast and the funk that stayed sharp in the air whenever he raised his hand. His arm hairs were grainy as if he’d forgotten to towel off beach sand and lay like dark brown rush grass blown southeast. Strangely, his right arm was smooth as ours, still a kid’s. Half a man, back when we were all trying to be. For years, I imagined it was the dampness of his cast that made it fertile, that it was a chrysalis hanging off his elbow. That his kid arm got pulped and processed in the dim space— the matrix of what’s left rebuilding itself anew. That his arm then emerged and looked up into the light. That it touched the wind. Was shaken free.