Highways and Byways: Life of a Thousand Papercuts

By Maik Strosahl

Was having a conversation with a driver trainee who lost one family member and is losing another. The statement came up that really we have only one guarantee at birth: that our days will come to an end at some point.
    That led to a conversation on the causes of death, how a death certificate may state someone died of Covid, some blunt force trauma, or a heart attack, but really it is a series of events that brings us to our end.
    It reminded me of a piece I started a few years ago and I got to digging for it. When I found it, I didn’t like the original title at all and it needed a bit more editing, but I found it still relevant to several recent conversations with friends, all of us dealing with our mortality.
    Here’s to living life fully and to the bitter end, when the final page pricks our finger and the book of our days is quietly closed.

Life of a Thousand Papercuts

Birth marked
and wheeled away
bleeding,
first at a crawl
then a stumble step,
then “My, has it been a month,
a year?”
and off to school
pencil scratched to paper,
skinned knees and first crushes crushed,
broken hearts forward,
give him a diploma and tassels,
send him off to war—
oh so much bloodshed—
and time stopped

He was one of the lucky ones,
returning with wounds bandaged,
still seeping,
still weeping for friends
come home in a box,
along with those found but mostly lost,
wandering the streets for direction
while he recovered,
went back to school,
met the girl with a shine in her eyes
and his heart stopped

skipped a beat
as they built their life together,
stopped again

at the birth of a son,

at the appearance of another,

at the smile of his daughter’s
first steps toward him
and then down the aisle
handing her off to another,
moments bleeding faster and faster,
each with love
but also loss,
now just papercuts through the years,
though laying Father down
tore him up,
then Grandma,
then a close friend,
Aunt Sadie and Uncle Curtis,
an acquaintance, another,
then Mother,
whose loss he thought
was the worst pain ever
until his firstborn fell
then his lover of 47 years
and the hemorrhage continued
until the attack

He woke to a room
of children, grand, great grand
and one tiny bundle grander,
faces smiling through their pains,
hoping through their own bleeding traumas
that this was not
a forever moment.
He reached to a youngster,
pulling her close,
whispering his love and a secret
she could not yet understand—
“None of us get out of here alive...”

Bleeding,
bleeding,
bled.
Death marked
and wheeled away—
wounds open,
but finally run dry.

Copyright © 2022 by Maik Strosahl Michael E. Strosahl has focused on poetry for over twenty years, during which time he served a term as President of the Poetry Society of Indiana. He relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri, in 2018 and currently co-hosts a writers group there.