Message in Our Bodies
For some months, the backs of my hands spoke to unheeding audience.
I was in relationship then with a partner I loved dearly. He loved me too. Weighed down by his unprocessed bits, human as he was, he was unable or unwilling to treat me with the respect and honor we all deserve from those who walk alongside us.
The language of hands is compounding. At first, phantom itch below my knuckles: How long will you hope in silence?
“Nothing’s perfect,” I rebutted, breathing deeply so as not to scratch. “Don’t be dramatic.”
The itch crawled to the back of my wrist. Patience isn’t always virtue. Spread and pressed outward.
Fingernails provided momentary relief. Then I gathered my rejoinder. I’d close and open fists, hold my hands close to my mouth, blow streams of breath at embers that lay just below the surface.
Speak, they broiled.
“I can’t,” I snapped. “I’ll lose him.”
You’ll lose yourself.
“Phht.” For this, I had a ready answer. “I won’t. Not me. I know my worth. I don’t need anyone else to know it for me.” I held my head high, tucked my hands beneath me, burying them alongside my own unexamined bits, which believed I had what I deserved.
What could my hands do in the face of my insistence on nurturing anything but me and thinking I would grow? They erupted, white blisters raising from flaming scarlet surface.
Stubborn creature that I am, I plunged my hands in oatmeal bath, attempted soothing with lotion. I drowned their screams, alternating trickle and stream, testing, now icy, now scorching. I pulled sleeves to knuckle when I went out, hiding proof of my rage. I smoked cigarettes in shadow to tame the rebellion, dowsing my hair and clothes and fingers in essential oil to mask my shame.
Only when I at last spoke my pain and said, “No more,” did my hands calm, their smoothness returning within twenty-four hours of my love’s and my farewell.
You know how this story ends, right? I became willing audience. What joy! We knew better than to try again, my partner and me. Or if we did, we each looked first at the bits of us we’d hidden from ourselves. My heart didn’t shatter at another parting and then one more, my hands throughout our blindfolded attempts too tired to weigh in—to say, don’t you see you’ve missed the point? That you and I are we?
Even now, years later, I turn to this wonderful creature, who climbs and stretches and bears and hopes and seeks. I ask her joints that ache, just when I’m daring at last to be seen, to risk the necessary hurt that is sharing a heart out loud, “What do you want me to know?” As if she were not me.
A Prompt: Body Talk
On the third Sunday of each month, you’re invited to a Zoom with a prompt if you want it. If you’re reading this now, the gathering has past. But the prompt’s still here! Today’s prompts are one of my favs—lists! My advice for a list prompt is to free write. Go wherever it takes you. It might end up being a list of one because the first item you thought of engenders a paragraph or five. Wonderful! It might be a list of many because a bunch of items come to you in a flurry, and you’re jotting them down one after another. Wonderful! It might be a repeat of the word “list” or the prompt over and over because that’s what your pen wanted. Wonderful! It might be something related to the prompt in a way only you can really know. Wonderful!
Prompt 1: List bodies of water you’ve known.
Set a timer for 8 minutes. Go.
Prompt 2. List bodies of work you’ve devoured.
Set a timer for 6 minutes. Go.
Prompt 3. What does your body know? Or if you want to keep listing, list messages from parts of the body that is you. Or list what your body knows.
Set a timer for 12 minutes. Go.
👐 A note on Community Zoom Gatherings, third Sundays
These are not workshops but, rather, a chance to gather and meet each other, to create side by side, and to share if that calls. All are welcome. Want a workshop? Here’s one on editing your own work.
Wanna get all the invites to these free gatherings?
Zoom deets
Feb 18, 10 am PST | Zoom | 45 minutes
Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87391823786?pwd=1uOl4BsyYP7obYGogultvZHJaD3iK7.1
A lovely piece, Holly. Those hands of your craft wonderful words :)
I feel such recognition of these hands! 🧡