Again, before the end of the year

I am consistently awful with updating this thing. I suppose that should be one of my New Year's Resolutions.

Things are alright. I'm working. But here is a new poem.

Knuckles

When she sits on her hands
it’s not a fear of where they’ve been,
subway handles and the men
she’s been with, a broken
window in her high school and
the rock she held. Instead,
it’s when they move.

They raise themselves, walking
coins on their knuckles and slipping
her arm around his shoulders,
leading to a kiss she didn’t want.
In the morning, they crawl into the
sheet-creased-landscape and, keratin into
cloth, hold on,

a missed alarm
away from losing her job, and
she deadens them in smokers’
gloves, fingerholes freeing them
and her to a normal day.

At least until
she’s back inside, and sitting on them
keeping them dead, isolation,
and pulling one out
to get through her day
five fingers
at a
time.