He leaned back in his chair and held
those hands out, so soft he said, not a working man’s,
an embarrassment, really, but he
was smiling, and those white hands flashed like coins
spun on their pie-crust ends, one side,
the other, a blur, the tips shooting light, and his wrists
elegant and just a little bony. Oh, they
were graceful in their shame, the way a man’s hands
should be, reticent and raw, relieved
of tools and time- refreshed, ready to hold anything
without any callous to cause friction,
ready to receive the currency of what he’s afraid
to reveal, the only tender anyone
is really willing to die for, tendered to those hands
like an investment in what he
can’t yet imagine is a decent and fair way to live,
to be sustained, and in whose hands
would you rather place into safe-keeping your love,
finger cocked to pull its trigger?
What dumb meat? What pale vesicle? What beautiful
lumbering memory of a future
not yet promised, hot and molten, sympathetic stigmata,
wounds we all must bear.