Keratin

An endless October sky casts
reams of light into my lap as
I contemplate the thinning skin

on my hands, the blue highway of veins
prominent on their mountainous journey,
the joints of my fingers swollen

from repeated retraction and release.
The pads of my palms lie cool
on my thighs, waiting on the warmth

of a twentieth-century touch
that no longer exists except
within this thought on this blue day,
proof that the body remembers.

Charlotte Hamrick’s poetry and prose has been published in numerous online and print journals, most recently including Muddy River Poetry Review, Flash Frontier, The Rumpus, and Literary Orphans. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist for the 15th Glass Woman Prize. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and a menagerie of rescued pets.