I Used to Pinch My Mother’s Hands
Her
long skirt comes almost to her ankles
to
conceal the varicose veins,
and
she rests her elbows at her sides.
The
telenovela murmurs from the corner
as
she pulls at the flesh over the back of her hand,
the
one covering the roots of fingers like pistons.
The
flesh rises pinched and when released
remains
raised, doesn’t spread.
I used to pinch my mother’s hands like
this
and wonder when the same thing would
happen to mine,
she
tells me in her low delicate voice,
exhaling
a chuckle,
like
she heard a joke once long ago
and
still relishes the punch line.
I
stare at her instruments of labor,
the
ones always pushing against the surface of objects
as
if they were all an unsteady wall.
If
the years of washing clothes by hand,
the
back and forth of knuckles over washboard,
have
speeded up the life of the cells
now
spotted and discolored,
it
must be that the flesh remembers
because
it never fully heals,
the
past always frothing beneath the surface.
The
arthritic hands at late middle age
look
almost smooth and taut again,
as
she places her other hand over the raised flesh
and
turns her eyes to the telenovela.
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