March 4, 2019
These hands of mine.
I look down on them for hours on end as I peck away at the keyboard, click the mouse, scroll endlessly on Instagram. The swipe of a MetroCard, the twirl of a dinner fork that wrangles fettuccine into submission, anchor of downward dog, sudser of Dove bar. Wrist bony, skin taut, fingers long, deft, graceful. Piano fingers, my mother often pronounced with pride. Yes the nails have always been weak and pliable, bare of polish, but the handshake firm in compensation.
They are unfailingly cold, even at the height of summer’s intensity. Not like my grandmother’s, butter soft gentility. Not like his, prodigious with warmth.
The skin on my hands is thinning, loosening itself from the tissued infrastructure below [ligament? tendon?]. Freckles look suspiciously like age spots. As for texture, scaly isn’t entirely fair – I swear I really am trying to up my water intake – but papery might begin to do the trick. Tonight the tips are pruned from scrubbing the charred frying pan, a bit of skin peeling on the right index finger.
I slather on Lavande de Haute Provence and get lost in a memory.
