Well-Worn Hand by Donna Vorreyer

My cuticles split and bleed as if

they had dug a garden without tools,

had clawed their way out of a grave.

Why do I still reach for you?

All I want is one smooth touch,

the stroke of silk, my dry roots

drinking up moisture, plumping,

filling in the lines and ditches.

All I want is to hold something

beautiful, to be full to bursting

with the liquid bliss of rivers,

with the cool smooth of a stone.

What I have instead: a place where

edges curl and blur, a place I feel

in the webs of your fingers, the rose

of your fist. I rub my sandpaper palm

against your door, hope flaking to dust.

Donna Vorreyer lives in the Chicago area and spends her days trying to convince teenagers that words matter. Her poems have appeared in many journals, most recently Autumn Sky Poetry, Apparatus Magazine, Cider Press Review, Ghoti and Fickle Muses. She loves Diet Coke, massages, mowing the lawn, and her family, not necessarily in that order.

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