Charles Duffie

Charles Duffie is a writer working in the Los Angeles area. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Anastamos, Bacopa Literary Review, Prime Number Magazine, Exposition Review, Opossum, Meat for Tea, Heavy Feather Review, FlashBack Fiction, and American Fiction by New Rivers Press.

PIERCED by Charles Duffie

Each evening, I remove the band-aid, pinch the tweezers’ silver teeth, and draw the splinter from my thumb. I faithfully clean the small wound. By morning my private stigmata will be partially healed. The body is a determined machine. The sliver of pine is only half an inch long and thin as a needle, but against my brown palm it glows like a cosmic shard. I dip a cotton ball in peroxide, touch the splinter, disinfectant cold as river water, then place the baptized thorn in the hollow of a contact lens case and click the lid. The click always…

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