blood blister’s rosy head rose up on my palm. The hammer’s rubber grip rubbed the grooves and
divots, not, surprisingly, the one wielding the rusted pry bar. I wedged the bar between two boards
of the treehouse’s eaves and pulled till the nails squealed. Tree that this hovel held had gone and
died, it got bored into by woodpeckers feasting on the chubby grub that ate at its trunk. With each
pull and galvanized scream, spiders stirred, dirt tickled my hair, and I yelped. Dad, the twenty-year-
ago builder of this Ewok fortress, sighed watching from the ground. Wasps or spiders weren’t new.
Milling among the beams just after the last nail was struck. Younger, I’d squat in the tree and
observe these hairy-hands prolific in their spinning. Angled my head to highlight their work. Deadly
net or art, the strands clung to dust, leaves, until they were useless. It all had to come down. Yet
each strum of body hair was an eight-legged invasion of my person, as I hunched within the
cramped box. Child-me didn’t understand the danger, but I do now.
Seán Griffin received an MFA in Creative Writing from Manhattanville College. Seán’s writing has appeared in The Southampton Review, Selcouth Station Press, Impossible Archetype, Cathexis Northwest Press, and elsewhere. Seán teaches writing at Concordia College of New York, is an editor for Inkwell Literary Journal, and lives in New York with three amazing dogs.
