to my five-fingered tools for living
so good to have you touching the keys for “s” and “h” and “f,” so good to have you reaching for the right letter in a rote motion that began to grow back when you were the only body part that mattered in typing class when you were a mere sixteen, that age when you learned to do other new things, like touch the face of a lover, like wrap yourself around a steering wheel, like unlock the laundry room door at midnight and re-latch it at two.
thank you, dear hands, for your grip on books, for turning pages and holding stories like food for the hungry. thank you for seizing writing pads and ball point pens and scribbling all the unleashed angst like a doctor might write a prescription for whatever ailments pressed on the temples, the backbone, the heart. thank you, dear knuckles, for cracking, for teaching me how to feel anxiousness in one place and loosen it one pop at a time.
thank you for reaching for the graham crackers on the top kitchen shelf and then for the milk, like you were my better mother. thank you for pulling up my socks and tugging on those impossible control-top panty hose and the inane back zippers and scratching the itches that could only be reached with the bristle brush. thank you for covering my eyes when the view got gory, for slapping my cheek when I dozed at the wheel.
thank you for hosting gems and silver that took on the shape of your digits, more oval than circle, more orbit or egg. sweet extensions of who i have been, thank you for being the means to so many ends, showing up without an agenda, ready to serve, willing to act beyond fortune or failure, unconcerned with the state of your nails, the length of your life line.
that you have been with me since birth gave you the chance to spread, to touch air, skin, teddy bear, doll, daddy’s chin, crayons, bike handles, scissors, balls, buttons, momma’s feet, play-doh, piano keys, onion skin pages, shoe laces, grandma’s treasures, cereal boxes, television knobs, velvet, ice cream cones, magnolia leaves, clothespins, songbooks, stair rails, deviled eggs, album covers, bed sheets, feathers, bodies forever gone cold.
