Palms

By Olivia Stripling

Discussed: violence, abuse

When I was born, I didn’t have hands.
My father gifted them to me on my first birthday.
We held hands before dinner, kissed knuckles before bed. He held my wrist and he held my neck and he held my esophagus with expectancy. He made me promise to hold caverns of quiet in my palms.

But my palms are empty.
Never have they not been empty.
I trace earlobes and spines.
I try to grasp my brain and poke my own eye.
Nothing holds. No, nothing stays.

My father and I have the same fingerprints. They bleed together like inky residue. Often I feel the need to stick my finger into his skull and test the fragility of his brain.

.

A boy I used to know stuffed dirt under his fingernails. White hot knuckles pressed into my cheeks, burning away my tears. Clammy child hands fought wars with my own. His fingerprints were someone else’s. Mine. Or yours.

If the light shone too bright, he balled his hands into instruments of anger and punched blood into my nose.
He never thought of ripping his own skull out.
He would never think of taking his own eyes out.
Maybe he could if he tried.

.

When the girl I love is intoxicated she holds my hair and twists it into braids. Squeezing my scalp and passing drinks, her melting indignation encircles my own. We have only held hands once, but she holds my shoulders and cleanses my cheek with silk palms.

When I was born, I didn’t have hands.

I wonder if her hands should be more scarred than they are.
I’ve borne witness to feet pulled, tugged.
To candles that softened into eyes, burning irises.
I’ve heard whispers of pain when her tongue licks salt off my palm.
And yet only during the inauguration of the moon does she threaten to kiss my ear, leaving it ringing.

.

My palms are empty, but not without pain.
Yours are forced to stay open, to catch and hold whatever’s near.
Still I think the pain comes all the same.

Your spine was cracked before mine was held. The words you write become my fingerprints, and Dad’s. Ink on ink on ink, until the corners of our existence spill onto the floor, and our spit is black with words and thought. Sometimes you can’t follow my footprints in the sand, so I’ll turn us around and follow you instead.

.

Follicles of breath tracing along sweating temples. Gushing blood held in sacred palms. The first drink is passed to my love, and I lick its sweet syrup dregs.
I imagine feet in silt.
I think of ink-born eulogies.

My father is left with my hands, as a parting gift. He is given a kiss on his knuckles. I can only hope the quiet caverns I so desperately clung to were good enough to leave behind.

.

My hands bury themselves into a memory, hollowing out my head and searching, quietly, for remains.
They find love in the deepest cracks of my brain.
I grab onto my mind, and it stays in my hands.
It fills my palms.
My body is mine.

Performance

@girlswritenow

Palms by@l1vvvyyy #writing #poem #spokenword

♬ original sound – Girls Write Now

Process

I started the idea for this piece while noticing how people hold the subway pole, and how this defines their character. A few pieces were written about my own hands, and I found myself drawn to how others’ bodies dictate our relationship, and how I see them. I focused on people I love, or desperately wanted to love. Originally I wanted this piece to be a narrative of life and death, starting without hands and ending with me dying, giving away my hands. But throughout writing I realized it was a piece about finding love, so I focused on that for the ending.