Fingerprints
Posted by David Warner | Filed under Poetry, Print
Her hands are old and deep
Like grandmothers’ laps and love songs
Wide, dark, and moist
Like deep cavernous stomachs
Moaning for the slightest hint of nourishment
She’s starving
For just one touch that isn’t overtly disrespectful
One touch to let her know her hearts there
For a reason other than a reminder she can still hurt
She was used and beaten by too many men
Rushing for the parts of her that are easiest to understand and easiest to open up
Passing her mind and her palms
En route to her body
Which was used and beaten
By too many men ready to leave their kids in her
Cause it was easy
Cause she was “easy”
Cause her mind isn’t easy
It’s used and beaten
Creviced, cornered, and nuanced
Clever, caring and nimble
Like her hands
Weaving warm winter dreams
For her patchwork family
Navigating stream after stream of tears
In gravy boats instead of giving them food for thought
Because her mouth doesn’t mesh with her mind the way her hands do
Just another hole for dicks to go into
And misled, misshapen products of her pain to come out of
She shoulda named her kids Fuck, Shit, and Bitch
Instead she made them all euphemisms
All lil prisms trying desperately to turn their mother’s
Dull flickering light into a rainbow
Raindrops bursting from the clouds
Returning to the sea to tell their mother how beautiful the sky was
And begging her to come with them next time
Instead of just shouting her love at the heavens from drowning lungs
Acquiescing to the random ebb and flow
Until she’s the next to go
Hands smashing together
Like old sunken valleys collapsing around long since dried up rivers
as she prays to just go easily
To go quietly when she goes
Somewhere where she can watch the sea
And collect the sand in her hands
To make stain glass monuments to women like her
lullabies across the sky
To rock babies to sleep in grandmothers’ laps
An old deep love song to hold hands to
So she can finally leave her fingerprint on
A world that’s so careless with its hands
