Hands

His hand in mine:

a palm of creased wallpaper criss-crossed with tally-marks,

matted with old calluses, the kind

only thirty years of labour could make,

and milk-blue veins

snaking from wrist to weary knuckle, shaped a little

like the naked tree branch we’re perched beneath.

Administering

the dock leaf. Fleshy waves of cool licking away the sting.

The nettles hug the paint-flecked wall,

paralyzed inferno of green flames. 

My hand in his:

small, tiny; plump digits

wriggling at the nettle sting,

lower palm brush-stroked

with a faded chocolate stain - my lunchtime snack.

His thumb is blood-bruised purple-black,

from hammering a nail. He’s building a fence,

he lets me help. Mostly

I just stand there in my muddy dungarees

and Bob the Builder hardhat.

I ask him questions. He knows everything:

where the sun comes from and how old is the moon.

He knows everything,

even why the sky is blue.

I am a writer, poet and playwright living in Dublin, Ireland. I have previously been published in the Martello Journal and the Stoney Writers' Collection.