Transparencies

My heart has hands. Long, slender red fingers poking out from the center of my chest, grabbing, grasping other people’s vascular tissue and refusing to let go. My hands are predators. They’re always hungry. I use their fingertips to stroke the inside of some lover’s arm. They’re extra fingernails to bite. When I’m angry, I dig those stubs of nails into my palms; I have four fists: two for each type of beating. When I’m lonely, they can hold themselves.

Every day when I walk home I scan the sidewalk for signs of life. Bottlecaps, discarded gum, acorns, even bits of gravel—things that move when I kick them, proof of existence. Walking is falling, and catching myself again and again on every bended knee. When I’m not falling I’m floating, I can see into third-story windows, watch people type or kiss or brush their hair. When they walk, I can feel their every footstep, the impact of soles on pavement, like

tiny earthquakes, like natural disasters, all this pent-up force coexisting. I stand aside to watch them, and my heart’s hands are reaching, and grasping, and folded

as if in prayer.

• 
• 202 of 809
•