Your hands spell trouble--paradoxically,
in red bruises that swell and blue
veins that reach outward
past the skin,
searching for something fragile but intangible--like the song
of a rare bird or the color that a peach turns
one moment before ripeness--to cup in your hands
and then preserve
in the wooden box bolted down
underneath your bed--if only
you could figure out how to open it.

The box locks and unlocks
spontaneously
and you were never given a key.

Sometimes you hang from your bed
upside-down
and try to tease the box open with your eyes,
praying to the absent stars that your brain will fall
through to the top of your skull
and click open the lock with its flipped-over thoughts.

You wink at the lock and it winks back,
but does not reveal its contents
and only flirts with the idea of openness.

After a while you swing yourself upright and lie with open hands
until your palms’ little collection of colors and sounds floats toward the ceiling
in an exhale so quiet, it borders on silence.

And you close your eyes,
allowing the darkness to empty your mind
of its divine fullness.