Now I realize that I’m useless, that my hands

are but cruel clubs, each finger a skeleton key

that only unlocks the vault of poor thoughts.

I give them penance and this is well enough

to keep disappointment away but I know

the true feeling of corn husks and cicada shells.

I can imagine you as the beach. Your mind, the Gulf

and the span of all life separated by the shards

of the same splintered mirror, the divided factions

of reality, and an earth as clear as a fresh peeled orange.

We are guarded by years and generations, miles apart,

yet our hands share an ugliness that is too pristine

to describe, like the flat waters that hide a drowned man.