Workshop #6

Prompt: Look at your hands, notice how they look and feel. Write about them.

Hands

My hands, my hands are soft like the rest of me

They bear creases of existing that don’t quite meet

Dark paths that detail compression

Blood through thin skin in crisscrossing veins

that pulse in memory of an ancient ache

The welling up of a new wound

Marks in pen drawn on shaky foundation

And speckled red flesh that begins at my fingertips

And travels to my wrists to my shoulders to my chest to my stomach

Where pale lines crease and expand to make room

I am a collection of creases

Of lines

Drawn out in ink that runs blue below the beds of my fingernails

Where bone broke

Where scratches left scars

For my hands, my hands are roads I’ve run

And they keep me

Holding on to myself