"This back-and-forth leads dramatically to the only direct question the poem asks: 'Whose side are they [the soldiers (or, rather, the drops of blood)] on?' (line 21).

This line opens up a paradox within the poem, as it asks whether the blood is on her thumb’s side, since it betrays her by spilling all over the floor and staining the gauze that she uses to staunch the bleeding, or on her side—which implies that the cut was intentional, and her thumb is bleeding out as she had hoped."