I guess I've been a carpenter for, what, sixty years now? something like that. since I was a kid really, just like my dad, and his dad before him, always with wood under our nails, the smell of sawdust like a kind of perfume, a really specific scent, you know? and the sun, always the sun, out in the elements, even here in the city it gets bright, really baking sometimes, and you just work through it because that’s what you do, always have done. and my hands, oh god, my hands are... they’re kind of a mess really, calloused beyond belief, perpetually dry, cracked even, just the occupational hazard, the evidence of a life spent building things, I guess. a badge of honor, sort of. and you get used to it, you really do, like the feeling of splinters even, they just become part of the landscape of your skin, kind of like wrinkles on your face, just there, part of the story. but lately, this thing, it’s on my forearm, like a patch, growing, and it’s discolored, a weird kind of reddish-brown, and it’s got a texture to it that’s not quite like the rest of the calluses, which are usually pretty uniform, almost like leather, but this is different. and it sort of itches sometimes, but not like an allergy, more like a dull ache, a persistent hum under the skin. and I just keep telling myself, like a broken record really, that it’s just another callus, a really stubborn one, a particularly gnarly bit of skin from all the years in the sun, all the hammering, the sanding, the constant friction. because what else could it be, you know? like, it’s just a callus, it HAS to be. I mean, my body has always been this incredibly resilient machine, always just kept going, regardless of how I treated it, kind of like an old Ford pickup, maybe, just keeps chugging along even with a few dents and a bit of rust. and I look at it sometimes, really intensely, under the harsh light of the kitchen at 2 AM, when everyone else in this incredibly expensive city is asleep and it’s just me and the hum of the refrigerator. and I try to diagnose it myself, like I’m some kind of dermatologist, searching for a benign explanation, a comfortable, familiar label. I've seen enough oddities on skin over the years to know when something is... off, but I just keep rationalizing it away, like it’s a form of cognitive dissonance or something, because the alternative, the thought that it might be something ELSE, something that means my body isn’t this indestructible thing anymore, well, that's just a bridge too far right now, kind of. I mean, after all these years, to have something finally break down in a way that’s not just normal wear and tear... it’s a lot to consider, I guess, a lot to sit with, especially when you’re seventy-six and the world just keeps moving so damn fast around you, leaving you to contend with your own fading resilience, sort of.