When we think of our grandfather, what comes to mind are splinters of wood. Slivers, we used to call them. Careful, the adults would intone from the patio, where they sat reminiscing over steak and potatoes. Go out like that and you’re gonna get a Sliver! By “like that” they meant barefoot, which in those days we always were, and by “out” they meant to our grandfather’s workshop, which was what he called the empty carport where he made us toys. When we were babies that mostly meant blocks, smooth and round and too big to choke on, but as we grew bigger the blocks got smaller, sprouting little notches like the ones on castle walls. He made us other things as well: racecars, airplanes, pickup trucks, steamboats that would float in the tub, a dog you could pull on a string, with jointed legs that moved alongside the wheels, a mower full of green plastic balls that would pop up when you pushed it, a jigsaw puzzle of all fifty states. Our whole lives, all our toys were made of wood. Maple, beech, cherry, balsa. Walnut, cedar, alder, oak. We knew their names like they were our own.

But we digress. Have you ever felt anything softer than sawdust between your toes? How as soon as you touch it, the pile poofs out at the sides and is gone? Gone beneath the pads of our hurrying feet as they shifted the dust into new piles, new clouds to be split by our childish thunder. We laughed as we ran, and the adults on the patio whispered as they frowned. Why doesn’t he sweep that mess up? No way that would fly when we were kids—he must be going soft. And so we laughed louder, ran faster, because we knew what the adults didn’t know: that our grandfather’s dust was his gift to us, just another one of his toys.

You must think it strange, that the adults let us wander in that workshop alone. Unsupervised among the vice grips and nail guns, the dozens of types of saws. There was the hack saw with teeth as small as a gerbil’s, the keyhole saw shaped like a pirate’s pistol, the jigsaw that cut like our moms’ sewing machine—up down up down up down—and of course the reciprocating saw (too many syllables for us to pronounce, and so naturally it was the coolest, our favorite). But the truth is there was never any danger. All the tools were unplugged or out of reach, and even if they hadn’t been, we were too busy watching for Slivers.

We were terrified of them. Of the way the word rolled off our tongues as smoothly as the wood slid under our skin. Of the way it rhymed with shivers, which is what its mere mention would send down our spines. We feared the Slivers because their pain didn’t fade; it emerged. Not from the spot where it entered—the arch of a foot, the webbed skin between toes—but from the realization that it was a part of you, and how in that moment it became the whole thing.

We imagine our grandfather felt the same way when the doctors told him about the cancer. Their white coats, their yellow folders rustling as they crossed, uncrossed their legs. The adults informed us it was in a place called the thyroid, somewhere in his throat, but when we looked we couldn’t find it. The doctors couldn’t either; they tried cutting it out but it just grew back, grew stronger. After a while our grandfather couldn’t talk, and so the adults began to speak for him. Grab that broom, they told us, and sweep up your grandpa’s workshop. He needs all the help he can get.

We did as we were told. The floor was spotless when we finished, the tools neatly stacked and put away. The only thing left out was the table saw, its teeth slanting up in one direction like the rays of a chrome-plated sun. We turned to leave, determined to let it set behind us, when several of us cried out in pain. We had them, the Slivers. We knew it without even looking, but we propped our feet up on our laps to be sure. We all had the same thought then: run and go tell the adults, squint our eyes under the bathroom lights as they plucked us with tweezers, scraped us with a razor’s edge. But none of us ran. None of us told. Instead we walked out, silently wiping our tears. These Slivers would be our secret, we decided, without ever saying a word. And just like that, the throbbing in our feet got quiet, and our pink skin began to grow around the wood.

Our grandfather died four months later. The adults had him cremated, because this was less expensive than a big heavy coffin. All that wood. Before the funeral, they let us look inside the funny white box they now referred to as “him.” Inside was a mound of gray powder. It looked even softer than sawdust, but somehow we knew better than to touch it.

When the funeral ended, we all went home. It was way past our bedtime, so the adults sent us straight upstairs to get ready. We peeled off our itchy black suits, threw them in the hamper, and got in the bath. We soaked for a while, all of us, but especially the ones with the Slivers. In the bath you could see them most clearly, dark gray rods gleaming under skin like those photos of bacteria in our science books. Those of us with Slivers looked hard to find them, but they weren’t in the spots they were before. They weren’t in any spot at all. It would be many years and many science books later before we learned how they had vanished, eaten by enzymes beyond our control.

Joshua Ambre (he/him) is a writer whose work explores the ways in which queerness renounces, renews, or otherwise redefines existing relationships. His fiction has appeared in the Brooklyn Review, Cleaver Magazine, Sequestrum, and Fiction International. Joshua was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the 2024 Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Fiction at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. You can read more of his work at www.joshuaambre.com.