This hand made music and grew flowers,
it held many hearts but its palm is now dark.
This hand made handprints in the moonlight on steamy car windows.
This hand held your face and kissed it…and…smiled.
Its signature spelled out a mistake made in a minute.
I drew a line under a 7 year limbo
but below limbo lie the 7 circles of Hell.
Tell me, tell me I’m still beautiful,
I’m not second class.
I sit and stare at my single self in the looking glass.
Or does it stare at me?
Next I signed away 7 more years,
the middle section of my life,
Then I signed away – with my wife hand – my peace of mind –
this strange, warped treaty between you and I.
I dis this to myself.
It’s filed with the same barren hand that killed my future child.
I signed away her future for a faiytale,
a trade made with the love of Hope,
wanting to escape society’s sneering,
unnaturally single again,
wanting to feel that tingle again,
to make mid life alive when it’s dead.
What if?
A diving board into a rough sea of maybe.
This pen is an anchor not a chain,
rattling the even numbers like a hurricane
in our steady weight gain, 5 pints, Love lane, lie back, bitter choked, tv soaked
‘lives.’
I signed away my sense of fun
but now I’m done with down sizing me.
This signature is a cancer
that will spread all over the page.
Age cheating, eating time and money and hope and those promises of yours.
I’ve been offered many cures
and yours is just as good as any other.
When the laying on of hands didn’t save me..
this hand…that hand….
it’s a back and white end.
Alice Smith 2015
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