Parkinson's is not a stranger—
it's the shadow in the room
I try to staple to the wall
but who always finds a seat
staring at my hands
like they're already his.

He is jealous—jealous of the clay
that once softened beneath my thumbs
jealous of how my fingers
could command a world into form—
curls and strands of bolts and wires
shapes and contours of emerging faces
from nothing but faith and patience.

He wants to take that all away—
he wants to steal away my hands.

My hands—
the ones that pointed at shooting stars
and said There, son, wish.
The ones that held sorrow like it was glass
and never let it shatter.
The ones that cupped water
from a mountain stream
built sandcastles and kingdoms
wrote love letters and goodbye notes
and every poem in between.

Parkinson's is not polite—
He shakes me not to wake me up
but to remind me I am falling apart
in small bite size morsels—
inconvenient razor-sharp tremors.

He wants to convince me
that every stroke of my pen
is an affront to gravity—
that each line I draw
is a negotiation with more failure.
He leans close and says,
Why bother, brother, sculpting worlds
with hands that no longer listen—


These hands—weathered and worn out.
They have kissed a thousand stories into being
held loved ones in the rawest nights
lifted others from the floor of themselves.

These hands are ink-stained prophets
keepers of promise and possibility.
I have built entire universes in my palms
and no thief—no trembling thief
in the guise of a disease—
will erase what I have made.

So if Parkinson's comes,
hands outstretched,
grinning like he owns my ending—
I will raise my broken fists
however crooked, however cracked
and I will write one more verse
before every period,
from every last stanza
from every poem
I ever wrote
rains down on me.

He can shake me—
but he will never steal the art
I already gave to this world
to just make me into a caterpillar
with broken hands and broken wings.

dread
weighs
heavy
as
anxiety
grabs
hold
and
slowly
kills me