about a hand

Take a photo of your hand, she said. Look at it, really look at it. What do you do with your hands? How often do we use them but we don't notice them?

My hands write, when I allow them. They bear the effects of anxiety visible in the nails on my pinkies chewed down to the numb. They also bear witness to how much or how little water I am drinking- the less I consume the more brittle the nails are. They break and tear and I am forced to clip my once tolerable nails down to where the nail meets the tender pink of the finger.

My hands are dry- I dislike how lotion makes them feel slippery and coated, inhibiting the fine sense of touch. Up close the tiny channels and fissures across the back of my hand and up my fingers draw a sharp contrast to the rings I usually wear. The turquoise set in silver handed down from my grandmother. The pale robin's egg blue speckled with golden dust. The set of three slender stacking rings I received for Christmas several years ago. I never remove them, except during the long humid days of summer when the heat swells the body and the metal digs into my middle finger, threatening to cut off circulation.

This hand has done much, in nearly three decades. If hands this young have stories to tell, how much more do the wrinkled, rasined hands of our elders?