The beautiful words inside the hand
I hold, words like carpal bones, the small digits
In the wrist that connect the arm, as the hand
Turns slightly at the ulna I know it is pulling me
To bed after a hard day of labor, & then the phalanxes
Those tiny bones that make the digits
Of the fingers, & two in the overrated
Thumb though I prefer to praise the appendage
Which we hold & swear by. & this pinky:
Inflamed fat, callused, pressed into my knuckle.
Or this one tracing my carotid artery
As if it can hear the beating of my blood.
& all the collateral ligaments & nerves
That keep the fingers all in line, & add dexterity
& joy, the way they spread out wide to press
A piano’s keys, or trace as gently as a butterfly
A child’s upturned check. Yes, this hand
Though swollen from disease, the nails
Nearly gone, the skin wrinkled as an elephant
Mole. & yet when they were young, they were stronger
Than any that had held my hips. My wife’s old hand
In repose? A sleeping dove in the nest of my palm.
The woman has forgotten her man is dead,
and begins to tell us how they have loved for nine years, nine years can you believe it, and how she was there when his son died, and after he got worse and needed a wheelchair, and how she fed him by hand as staff watched. She does not remember too the knock down fights they’d have, cursing each other with fucks and cunts, or that her nickname for him was dumbass, and then each would forget and walk outside to smoke, and hold hands at the gazebo, and tell each the same set of stories they always tell. But a month ago he died, choked and fell into a coma. Her case worker took her to the hospital that night and she said goodbye to him, and for a weekend she was inconsolable. She sat and we’d hold her head as she sobbed, smoked and stared out at the rain alone. She couldn’t sleep. But then it ebbed, and the injury to her brain began to rewire over the pain. Tonight, she has forgotten her man has gone, and so we let her forget, as each of us I know would sometimes want to forget the ashes we have scattered, the wilted gardenias, and go on with the ordinariness of our days and all its common labors. And for one night at least I know the woman will sleep without the badgering profanity of grief. For grief can pull a body under. There is a blues that meanders through the blood and a blues that hides in the body’s bones. We feel it only when the rain makes them ache. I walk the woman outside to sit and smoke. I sit beside her. The moon is wearing its corsage. The daffodils have closed their petals. I watch her watch the moths flutter and dive in the porchlight’s wake.
