Steak Knife
Reflections on sudden violence, memory, and the fragility of life
Content Warning: This poem contains depictions of physical violence and trauma. Reader discretion advised.
Sitting there in the work canteen, steak on the menu, station noise overhead, ten of us crammed around that rectangular table, sixty more buzzing like flies. I felt it before I heard it, that tightening, a silent boil a few chairs down, some words slipped out, sharp as shards, I missed them, but the rage hung there, thick as locomotive smoke. The guy, I knew his face from passing nods, but now it twisted, his fork in one hand, steak knife in the other, gripping tighter, not for cutting meat anymore, but for something darker, a tool turned purpose in a blink. It yanked me back, thirty years almost, 1997, clubs spat us out, all night on stimulants, dancing like fools, ten of us at some stranger's place, flying on pills, laughing, wired, until the host pulls vodka, and suddenly everyone's pouring it down, mixing fire with the high. One guy I came with, not a friend, just a shadow, sitting a few spots away. I sensed it again, that quiet storm building, aimed at the host—late I figured it out. not a knife this time, but a bottle, smashed across the face, permanently rearranging features, blood and glass everywhere, room cleared like a raid. Now I'm 49, irregular wires in my head, and violence guts me, physical or the soul-kind, the kind that slices dreams without a blade. I see the weight of it now— work grinding years away, hopes stacked like cards, becoming a dad, pouring everything in, family, friends, decades building fragile things, and one swing, one stab, one bullet wipes it clean. It still amazes me how little it takes, how fast a life can be unmade by a moment that doesn't even belong to you. Back in the canteen the knife catches the light. no one moves. history holds its breath. I finish my meal slowly, hands flat on the table, keeping everything where it already is, knowing how little it takes to cross the line. - UpsilonA