Fretful Fingerpainting
Hurt little children, sitting in half-circle,
gripping crayons like they were magic
wands. I watch different ways hands hold objects:
She moves colors like she was orchestrating
a symphony of serenity. She is managing
to escape into another world
for these few hours.
Sometimes it is enough to see
a hand lose its fist in a flurry of
wide loops and bulky blossoms
she can only see and not grasp.
He, tearing at paper with obsessively sharpened
pencil, does not use color. His hand stabs
at unwritten things. If I can not hold his palm,
facing upwards and pen my name and number
on his wrist, where there are old scars ~ and new slashes ~
I will lose him ~the world will no his anger
for as long as heart can handle this ripped picture
and then we will have to forget ~feign feelings
that we were not included in his dark deeds.
He has my number scribed for his next ache
to stroke flesh with anything sharp. It may stall him
and perhaps his arms will drop in submission
as he leaves his hard home to find a pay phone.
My hands, hot with healing, find ways
to brush away those alternate spasms
of dark little hands that have potential to part sky.
I have held charcoal in my own fingers;
drew little bodies with big hands
and people commented on how dark my pictures were,
how intense, how odd that I choose deep hues.
My hands know how hard it is to try to print
what words can not begin to describe.
Come, children, let us draw deep black roses
and tack them all over the community
so they will see, they will know, they will want
to give us new colors to fingerpaint with.
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