Hands

A poem

Still from Four Nights of a Dreamer (Robert Bresson, 1971, Victoria Film/Albina Productions/The Criterion Collection)

I re-apply the plasters,
for them to fall off in the shower
and reveal mistakes and
callouses
I try hard not to aggravate.

I look down to
the dried out,
cracking hands
of a hard worker,

watch them type out intimacies,
produce scrawled handwriting,
attempt to articulate
almost faded thoughts, out in the sun
for too long,
and now losing their vivid colours,
gaining the same pallor as those hands
which I watch engage with the world.

I miss them the most
when they run through your wet hair,
or when the skin cracks and opens up
and what was white becomes
a sore pinkish-red.

I re-apply the plaster,
avoid water like a Mogwai,
and try to hold nothing
til my hands are healed,
the opium of waiting
for something promised
but unseen.