My hands. The lifetime of hands; the language of hands. Here were the scars of a lifetime spent trying to unearth something, what I wasn't sure. My hands have aged with me, the knuckles have become red raw from the years of slave driving manual work, scars from unforgotten accidents, a story behind each one.
I turned them over to look at the palms, lined now, the heel roughened by years. There was a scar beneath my ring, whitened by time. The silver mood ring, which flashes golden in the sun, and burns red whenever you are near. Do you remember the night you gave it to me? The first time you whispered in my ear that you loved me, and the expression on your face when I said it back?
These hands, they had held starfish and crabs, caught by my brother and father on the long summers days spent at the beach down in Sussex where my grandmother lived by the sea. They had swung vodka bottles by the neck, held guns, knives and other hands.
They had held your hand. Once, in Pitville Park when the ice on the pavement made you slip sideways, the time you turned to me and slipped your hand into mine, smiling. Your hands. I sat at that cold, tiled table and conjured your hands in my memory. Small, white and child-like, stained with nicotine as you smoked nervously and bit the skin around your nails. Your fingers looked blind, like stumps searching for something.
As I walk into the bar, where we arranged to meet, I try to erase the feeling of your hands slipping into mine in Pitville Park as you slipped away from me.
I walk into the bar as unprepared as ever and there you are, alone at the table, twisting the stem of a wine glass. We exchange a kisses and I sit, order a drink.
"How's things?" I ask, avoiding your searching eyes.
"Really good, really very good. It's all worked out better than I hoped." And as you tell me about your new work, about your mother who, is engaged to a used car sales man called Steve, and brother who's just gone off to university, about the prospects for your success, I console myself with the thought of your damaged, blind hands, which will always reveal you for what you are. I listen and I drink and I order more drink. Still I find it hard to look you in the face. I pull a cigarette from your pack and you lean forward and light it for me. Your hands wrap around mine, steadying the tremble, and I see for the first time what you are, the same as ever, nothing's changed!
