Hands
do not write about your divorce my editor warned, everyone writes about divorce it will not sell.
no more poems about the man who shredded my heart, about the gaping hole in my chest that could not be filled. so instead I wrote a hand poem
that wasn’t a divorce poem or a trauma poem and not an about-my-marriage or my ex-husband poem. this was not a poem about my ex-husband
before he was my husband caressing his Martin’s strings with slender agile fingers, and whistling “And I Love Her,” low and sweet, type of poem. no this poem was about
his surgeon hands groping a woman’s abdomen, grasping a breeched fetus while in utero, kneading and pushing the unborn head into the pelvis and weeks later when
the turning failed, brandishing a scalpel, slicing, ripping, tearing, suturing, repairing, to the full-throated cries of the life he’d saved. no, this was a hand poem. a poem about hands that could
wield a blade like a baton, twirl magic out of catgut, and yank a slimy, bloody, howling newborn from the brink of death. a poem about hands with a gift from God if I believed in God,
sainted hands, hands so virtuous that they trembled when he slapped the tender underbelly of our puppy, hands that cramped around our kitten’s head when he tried to stuff its skull into his mouth,
hands that would not hold mine in public but shot out to clutch my left breast at 2 p.m. on a sunny New Haven sidewalk, hands that stopped me in my tracks and yelled,
you are no longer safe with me. hands so saintly, so virtuous, so noble, that, yes, they deserved their own poem.
Childhood/Adulthood
I. Childhood
The curse first came to me in my grandmother’s kitchen when I was nine. Earlier that day I’d been playing outside with my cousins careful to gather the little ones away from the roadside, clucking to the chicks.
She’s so responsible, one Auntie said to the next and swigged her coffee mug. Always thinking of the others, answered another. And through my teen years, Father, chiding me with idioms.
Don’t/judge/a/book/by/its/cover give/him/the/benefit/of/the/doubt put/yourself/in/his/shoes until I no longer had a self. The older boyfriend in high school,
trust me trust me give/him/the/benefit/of/the/doubt naked photos in the woods, almost sex, and then sex. I remember returning his engagement ring
when I was seventeen, his hard stare. Then to college where it didn’t stop. Boys I shouldn’t have dated don’t/judge/a/book/by/its/cover. A lonely, divorced professor
following me everywhere put/yourself/in/his/shoes until I said yes to his ring. Back home, the professor ripping our phone from the wall, no more
study groups with fellow students. My own body detached from others until I was alone with him and fear. I tried to return to the need, but terror had taken hold.
When I last saw Father, he had nothing to say.
II. Adulthood The $1400 designer bags will come from Saks, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf’s. Their security tags will be removed
with a neodymium magnet the size of a silver dollar, free delivery from Amazon. The purses will be shoplifted and stored
in a walk-in closet in the Malibu home of a middle-aged, divorced and remarried, child psychologist and thief.
She will visit her private storage room often over the next ten years, petting and squeezing her pocketbooks
whenever she needs to feel in-control, whenever she needs to feel special. She’ll caress the leather and admire
the sparkle of clasps and buckles. Sometimes she’ll spread her arms and spin in the middle of the room until she’s dizzy,
gold reflections streaming like a meteor shower in motion. When she’s done, she’ll collapse to the carpet, panting, heart racing, hands shaking.
She’ll gaze at the ceiling, thinking of her two children, her husband an attorney to the Stars, the award she is to accept next month for her work.
And then, nauseated, she will roll to her side and retch.
Karen Laugel is a physician and emerging writer who lives on the Delaware coast with her kayaks. Her work has appeared in Pen in Hand and the Tipton Poetry Journal and will soon be featured in the Ginosko Literary Journal. She is a student of The Writers Studio in New York City and is a member of the Rehoboth Beach Writers Guild and the Eastern Shore Writers Association.