Hammer

Every Wednesday when I went to the shared office before the class on the comma, etc., there was on the desk, among the notes from students aggrieved and belly-up and memos about lack of funding and the quixotic feasibility memos and labyrinthine parking memos and quizzes pecked by red ink and once orange peels, a claw hammer. There when I came and there when I left, it didn’t seem in anyone’s employ. There was no room left to hang anything. It already knew how to structure an argument. It already knew that it was all an illusion that everything hadn’t blown apart because of its proximity to oblivion, having so recently come from oblivion itself. Its epiphyses were already closed. It wasn’t my future that was about to break its wrist or my past that was god knows where. It looked used a number of times not entirely appropriately but its wing was clearly healed. Down the hall was someone with a glove instead of a right hand. A student came by looking for who? Hard to understand then hard to do. I didn’t think much of stealing it, having so many hammers at home. There when I came, there when I left. Ball peen, roofing, framing, sledge, one so small of probably only ornamental use. That was one of my gifts, finding hammers by sides of roads, in snow, inheriting, one given by a stranger for a jump in the rain. It cannot be refused, the hammer. You take the handle, test its balance then lift it over your head.