Current mood:

sad

Hands
Almost no time lately to write, so all I've got is excerpts. Here's one from the other day:

Her hands, once soft, once smooth, now rough and torn, were touching my chin, were gently scratching at my cheeks, were tenderly cutting my face. I looked into her eyes – I should say this, I have seen photos of my mother as a young woman, I have seen her brown eyes radiant, I have seen them full of light – and they were dead, they were dried seeds, they were hard brown earth. She knew my name that day, remembered it, is perhaps more accurate, and she said it over and over, her thin voice pitched high and then low, bright and lilting one moment and then trailing off to dark unheard mumbling; a child’s nonsense song, nothing more. I took her gently by her fingers, pulled her hands down from my face, and wept into that wasteland. I was there, perhaps for half an hour, staring into my mother’s dry dead eyes and rubbing her palms with my tears while she softly sang my name.


gymbrall