Her fingers held the rugged hands
she’d known for fifty years.
Sun-creased knuckles,
half-moon nails,
the freckled place where a burn
never quite faded:
each one a chapter
her mind could no longer name.
He spoke softly,
as if whispering into a storm,
calling her by the name
that once turned her head like a sunflower.
Today, her gaze moved through him
to a place just beyond the window.
But her grip remained.
In the saffron light of evening,
the body recalls what the mind does not.
Muscle remembers rhythm –
the way his thumb would circle hers
when the kids were asleep.
She hums an old tune,
the melody
scattered,
but something in it makes him weep.
Not because it’s wrong,
but because it’s still hers.
In this quiet erasure,
the hands remain
the last to forget.
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