by Slavena Salve Nissan
If we were somehow separated
for many years,
and if I became an old blind woman,
I would pick out
my old lover’s hands
out of those of a thousand men.
I would recognize the smoothness
of the palms
and the hint of calluses too.
He never did like those calluses,
always worried
that he would tear my skin or stockings.
But I loved them.
And all of these years,
I yearned for nothing
so much as the feeling
of those calluses carving
into the parabolas of my body,
shaping and reshaping me.
