quarantine hands

knuckles crack
a bleeding crucifix
between my metacarpal joints.
a confusion of life-lines
upturn the path through the desert
of my flaking flesh.
i have picked sandcastles here
and dried-out dusty rivers
carve their path
sometimes running rusty blood
or a geyser’s worth of soap.
fingers like pharaoh’s
doomed to crumble
my arrow-bones
point a road
that we lost long ago;
their promise peters away.
this year indelible skin
quarantine hands
an unmapped land.

Image Credit: Phoebe White


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