Old Friend from Far Away "Hands"
I look at my hands and see my mother's veins and wrinkles. I raise my palms to my face, as I do in prayer, and see the lines that map out my destiny; map out my destiny to palm reading fortune tellers.
Could a fortune teller see that my hands once knitted for countless hours as a child; knitted just like my mother? Could a fortune teller see that my hands are rubbed with bengay because my muscles and joints sting with pain; painfully brittle just like my mother? Could a fortune teller see the blood that wets my tongue after I devour my nails with worry; devoured with worry just like my mother? Could a fortune teller see that I would write countless pages for no one to read, just like my mother?
My hands are not my own, they are an extension of the women that came before me. The women in my family who cooked, cleaned, knitted, and wrote; these women's spirits and desires are all in my hands--our veins, our blood.
to be continued...
Could a fortune teller see that my hands once knitted for countless hours as a child; knitted just like my mother? Could a fortune teller see that my hands are rubbed with bengay because my muscles and joints sting with pain; painfully brittle just like my mother? Could a fortune teller see the blood that wets my tongue after I devour my nails with worry; devoured with worry just like my mother? Could a fortune teller see that I would write countless pages for no one to read, just like my mother?
My hands are not my own, they are an extension of the women that came before me. The women in my family who cooked, cleaned, knitted, and wrote; these women's spirits and desires are all in my hands--our veins, our blood.
to be continued...
nice! interesting lens and structure to help you say something important... hope to see you write and write about how your hands are not your own until finally you see (and write about) how they are, indeed, your own. and in the end, only your own.
ReplyDeleteMaryam--is this a part of your piece about dugu? An interesting/unexpected direction to take things. I want to know more about why you are choosing this path--how you get from dugu to ancestry, exactly. The obvious is there, but you run more on the ancestry thread in this bit. What is it about the women in your family that connects with this? Or is this another thing entirely?
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