STITCHES

CARL SANDBURG

BRIM'S hammer hit a wheelbarrow; a sliver of iron sent itself through the lens of the eye into the eyeball.

Brim in the white sheets wonders if he will lose an eye and if a wedding is put off when a woman says a one-eyed man won't do.

The doc says maybe the eye will last; the doc X-rays, goes in with a knife, holds the slit with wires, pulls the sliver out with a magnet, stitches the eyeball, and says a week later the eye is saved.

Brim knows now the wedding comes off; among the white sheets with one eye dark he knows his sweetheart will not face a one-eyed man at the breakfasts of life's years.

A month; the doc knows the eye is lost; the doc is thinking; it is not so easy to tell a man one eye is lost; still more it is not so easy to tell a man what must be told again to a woman who wonders whether it will pay her to have a one-eyed man to eat breakfast with all along life's years.

Brim is in the white sheets thinking; the doc is in his office thinking; the woman . . . the woman. . . .