In My Hands

In my hands napkins become wretched things
Clenched thoughtlessly into balls, worn into shreds
In my hands pens that click
Become disasters, while important papers become ragged;
Gnawed.
Wet glasses sing, and candle wax
always cools in the shape of my slightly burned fingers.
In my restless hands, whole things
Are made part.
In a prison cell I might scrape the iron bars with ever-sharper nails
And when I had made a feasible escape
Sit there dumbly. Worrying
The thin blanket between my hands.
A contiguous rosary.

These hands are lost
being hands.
They were meant to be hummingbirds or other
Winged things.
That could fight air when troubled
(instead of each other.)

And so I write, and the hummingbirds
Settle into silence.