◉ 014 | The Scar Beneath the Cloth

The round table in our dining room

was always covered with a tablecloth.

Always.

On non-special days,

we used a vinyl one.

Off-white.

Sometimes floral.

Underneath—

a story.

A scar.

Dad trimmed the table

with a jigsaw—

a clean circle, all the way around.

Ten centimetres, maybe less.

It was too big

for our small room.

Thick tabletop. Hard wood.

Maybe veneer.

Trimmed down from 110 to 90,

I’d say.

I don’t remember papa cutting the table.

I was too small.

I only remember the full-size version

with the cut piece glued back on.

Fixed so precisely

you could barely feel the join.

But you could see it

in the rare moments the cloth was off.

Especially the small hole near the rim—

the spot where the jigsaw went in.

The tablecloth was on 99.99% of the time.

Not to hide anything.

That’s just how it was.

Or was it?

The thing is—

they never threw that cut-off away.

They kept it in the šupa [shed].

A tiny space,

where things waited

to see if they still belonged.

They had to cut it in half,

like biting through

a slice of canned pineapple,

just to make it fit.

They knew,

somewhere deep,

one day,

they’d have more space.

The table—

scarred,

but whole

once more.