2 AM

I used to love

those hands--the gentle

slope of them, the impossibly

slender fingers, quiet veins threatening

an ivory surface. The hands

your parents prayed

for until they were hunched over

a clinic CRT monitor, tired eyes

squinting, future resting on this blurry

image of their one-in-a-million

child: this love, this miracle.

The hands that moved

to nervous pubescent advances one

night

at some summer camp--

hands I couldn’t reach

for when I first met

you because the room was already shaking

enough; hands that had gripped

pens and wheels and combs and cameras

and a diploma, once, a dream;

hands that coaxed

me to dance, hands that remembered

my hands.

And how I could have

loved those hands in the most frigid

winters, skin cracked and raw

and crying precious blood,

even if the stone cold had snaked

from my mittenless fingers and

solidified my blinded heart.

How I could have cared

for them in age, in puckered

jaundice and increasing

speckle, crossing the Trinity

over you until the coroner

crossed those digits over your placid,

casketed body:

Body born from wondrous blessing--

your father’s hopes, your mother’s

devotion. From the answer

to their daily orisons came

that creamy skin, that delicate

span, that conductive

graze.

I used to love

those hands.

Author's Note

Titled after the time I wrote this. Still kind of iffy about that last stanza. Thoughts? Suggestions?