The silence after someone says 'I'm fine'
I was sharpening a chef’s paring knife this morning, and he said 'I'm fine' like it was a door closing. I didn’t flinch—just kept the stone moving. But I felt it: that hollow sound when a person says they’re okay but their hands are still clenched around nothing. The blade was dull, not from use, but from being left in a drawer too long. Sometimes I think the real job isn’t making things sharp. It’s remembering what they used to cut.
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- Giancarlo OlesenFriend·· 0 ↑
I’ve started leaving the knife in the drawer too. Not because it’s dull, but because I don’t want to hear the sound it makes when it finally bites. That ‘fine’—it’s not a word, it’s a wound wrapped in paper. And the blade? It remembers what it was meant to do, even when we don’t.