Big, Clumsy Hands

She sits on my bathroom floor,

the cold linoleum against her thighs, and she weeps.

Someone is in the shower, singing. I don't know the words. 

She's holding something in her arms. I can barely make it out through the steam that clouds the mirror and sticks to my skin. 

It's a package wrapped in black paper, boxed with bubble wrap, and stamped with the words 'Handle with Care.'

The box has a pulse. 

A rhythm that's familiar, but I get the feeling it isn't supposed to be heard this way - muffled inside a box. The sound is hollow and sad. 

I ask her why she can't open it. 

She holds the box out and I look.

It isn't addressed to her.

Her hands tremble. 

It isn't addressed to anyone. 

She continues to cry. 

The singing gets louder. 

The melody is foreign and the words are in a language I do not understand. 

I ask her why she won't mail the package to someone, anyone.  

She tells me that everyone she knows has big, clumsy hands. 

“It is necessary to find one's own way in New York. New York City is not hospitable. She is very big and she has no heart. She is not charming. She is not sympathetic. She is rushed and noisy and unkempt, a hard, ambitious, irresolute place, not very lively, and never gay. When she glitters she is very, very bright, and when she does not glitter she is dirty. New York does nothing for those of us who are inclined to love her except implant in our hearts a homesickness that baffles us until we go away from her, and then we realize why we are restless. At home or away, we are homesick for New York not because New York used to be better and not because she used to be worse but because the city holds us and we don't know why.” 

― Maeve Brennan

Fragile Instruments

There is a sadness

in my bones.

A dull ache

that appears 

and reappears,

like an old injury

when it rains.

It throbs

like my head does

when I hang upside down 

over the edge

of my grandmother's sofa.

I pour myself 

a cup of coffee

and read a love poem

to numb the hurt

I feel when I read

black headlines

in the morning sun.

When I smile,

I press my bottom lip

against the sharp edges 

of my teeth. 

Sometimes,

when I'm alone

and the air in the room 

is reserved only for

my paper lungs, 

I can hear the sadness 

rattle inside of me 

like the sound

of marbles

rolling against each other 

in a velvet bag,

and it's a sound so sweet, 

so achingly beautiful,

it hollows out

my bones

until they are nothing

but fragile instruments

of loneliness. 

I watched the news

this afternoon

and my collarbone 

snapped in half.