The Knife-Grinder Passes

He comes when the afternoon thins to copper, a wheel of stone strapped to his bicycle, ringing a bell no one taught him to ring, only the street remembers its meaning.

Mothers bring out their dullest hungers— the bread knife worn to a silver crescent, the scissors that forgot how to disagree. He pedals the stone awake with one heel and sparks leave his hands like startled bees.

What he sharpens is not only the blade but the small cruelty of usefulness, the edge that lets a thing become itself again. A carrot falls open. A thread parts clean. The kitchen breathes its old efficient music.

Then he is gone before the lamps come on, trailing the smell of struck flint and rain, his bell growing thinner down the avenue until it is only a thought you almost had, a brightness you keep meaning to use.