I stabbed my hand when I was a kid. I just made a tiny hole, really, and it didn't hurt too bad. I wasn't even trying to stab it.

I wanted to know if the pencil could leave little dots on my hand like it did on paper. I was an obsessive doodler and left my teachers all kinds of flowers, monkeys, staplers, or whatever else I thought to draw. I had a signature style; every image was a handmade game of connect the dots.

I wanted to know if I could keep playing my game when I didn't have any paper. That was all. I hadn't meant anything by it.

That golden mechanical pencil snapped when I pulled it from my hand, abandoning a remnant of graphite in my palm. I should've expected it to do that. It was from the dollar store. But I was just a kid, and anything shiny and gold had my complete faith.

Mom was furious when I got home. "What do you mean you've got lead in your hand?"

We used tweezers, toothpicks, torches, anything we could to take it out, but it never worked. This went on for weeks.

Mom was worried someone else would see the speck, but we couldn't force it out. So I did the next best thing: I put on gloves. Pink, sparkly gloves that my mom could laugh about in public and say things like, "Oh, isn't it adorable how she loves those things?" and, "We know we can't let her wear them forever, I'm sure it's just a phase-"

They were pretty at first and I didn't mind them, or at least I convinced myself they weren't so bad. We were certain I wouldn't need them for long. Surely there was a doctor who would know how to remove the lead. How hard could it possibly be?

The gloves were scratchy, though. Glitter turned to pins, leaving my hands red every night. So red, I couldn't see the minuscule bruise at the center of my hand.

We went to doctor after doctor. Each time I told the story and each time they did everything they could to remove it, but it never worked. Lasers, surgery, freezing, acid, we did it all. The graphite was stubborn. Mom was increasingly distressed.

At first, I hadn't thought it was a problem. But after I saw her getting more distraught, I mirrored the emotions. What was so terrible about my hands that it was all we thought about?

I tried telling her I hadn't meant to do it and she always said it was okay, but I knew she didn't really think that. If that were true, I wouldn't wear gloves and we wouldn't go to doctors. But the gloves stayed, even when the money for needless medical bills ran out and the doctors became nothing but violent monsters lingering in the darkest corners of my consciousness.

I was moving to college and still wore pink, scratchy gloves. I graduated with palms full of needles. I interviewed for my first job while my fingers were on fire. I got married when my wrists were shackled.

My hands are so red, no one can see the dark splotch covering them. The skin has been rubbed away by sparkles, shredded by pins, scorched by fire, and bruised by chains. Now I wear nothing. My hands may be red, torn, shredded, scorched, and bruised, but you can't see the lead I didn't mean to put there in third grade, when all I wanted was to draw a monkey.