Last night I noticed that I'm dropping things
far too often.
Papers. Keys. Small plastic toys.
Even round lemons.
So far nothing fragile or important but still
this worries me.
I'm thirty-seven: not young anymore
but, also, I'm not old.
My first thought was: am I forgetting to hold them tight?
Perhaps, I'm not grabbing them right.
I sat for a while diagnosing my own mental health.
No. I am not becoming forgetful.
I can reason fine.
Relieved, I put my worries behind me
and went to sleep.
Darkness hurts my hands.
When I close my eyes
the pain starts.
It shoves itself like a clattering elevator
clawing its way up to my fingertips.
Poundings and tensions and strains
begin to disrupt my languid limbs.
In my dream, my palms feel like lead:
infinitely heavier than their normal weight.
My fingers start curling in.
But it's in my joints where the throbbing emanates.
The discomfort becomes insufferable.
It hurts to move my hands.
My fists have turned into numb bricks.
By now the pain has disrupted my sleep.
I take my sore hands and place them on top of me
as I turn my back and face the bed
letting my hands soak the heat guarded between
the sheets and my chest.
This alleviates some of the pain.
This is how I hope to get some rest.
Though I'm fully aware
that the pain in my hands
will never really go away.
when i was much younger, i worked at a meat packaging factory. There we worked with hot water in cool temperatures. Thus. This.
