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Description
i.
Long fingers taper,
thin between each swollen joint,
rounds of bone that can’t be lost,
like the purple-scarred stomach skin
from one year’s crackers-and-coffee diet,
the bass guitar calluses on numbed fingertips,
the panic attacks and Xanax collected
after ODing on heroin,
going heartbeatless in a hospital bed
while his veins were pumped with activated charcoal.

ii.
Like sausage links, his square-tip digits
not much longer than my own,
but larger, like I thought his heart was.
The fingers making my sandwiches,
pressing lower back and shoulder blades
in a goodbye-for-now hug,
wrapping gauze over my wounded skin –
the same fingers that did not grasp at my own
when I walked out on our two years.

iii.
The permanently sun-tanned hands
that once carried me on morning walks down the beach
are thickening with age like tree trunks,
and perhaps inside are the rings
for every one of his seventy-four years,
thin rings for years of hardship, his divorces,
his losing battle with boats and business;
thick rings for the children he raised,
the steel guitar he played, the treehouse he built,
and maybe the times I wrapped my fingers around his thumb
and told him that I would never get married,
I would stay with him forever.

Description
i.
Long fingers taper,
thin between each swollen joint,
rounds of bone that can’t be lost,
like the purple-scarred stomach skin
from one year’s crackers-and-coffee diet,
the bass guitar calluses on numbed fingertips,
the panic attacks and Xanax collected
after ODing on heroin,
going heartbeatless in a hospital bed
while his veins were pumped with activated charcoal.

ii.
Like sausage links, his square-tip digits
not much longer than my own,
but larger, like I thought his heart was.
The fingers making my sandwiches,
pressing lower back and shoulder blades
in a goodbye-for-now hug,
wrapping gauze over my wounded skin –
the same fingers that did not grasp at my own
when I walked out on our two years.

iii.
The permanently sun-tanned hands
that once carried me on morning walks down the beach
are thickening with age like tree trunks,
and perhaps inside are the rings
for every one of his seventy-four years,
thin rings for years of hardship, his divorces,
his losing battle with boats and business;
thick rings for the children he raised,
the steel guitar he played, the treehouse he built,
and maybe the times I wrapped my fingers around his thumb
and told him that I would never get married,
I would stay with him forever.