hands
your hands creak now.
slowly, over fifty years,
they’ve lost oil, like a
paint-chipped music box ballerina
jerking in the same circles
she used to glide through.
initially, the word “rheumatoid”
meant nothing in your
vietnamese-dominant brain,
but, gradually, your knuckles
began to grasp what words,
regardless of language, could
never completely capture.
both dorsum and palm
have lost the plush cushion
of adipose and youth.
mana exchanged for
memories of
stroking my growing back
while my breathing slowed and
sleep pulled in high tide
over my mind’s shore.
for 35 years, your seasoned fingers
guided endless suits and dresses through
your sewing machine just so
i could be here now,
my naive fingers
like baby bird legs
just beginning to learn
their way around the scalpel.
so when you grip your hands
in one another and ask me
if they’re ugly now that
the skin hugs your bones closer,
guilt twinges in me,
and i remind you of
grandma’s ballooned knuckles
and how you knelt over them and wept
before her casket.
Angelette Pham is a first year medical student at VCU School of Medicine, who started writing poetry in her medical humanities classes in college. She strives to maintain her love for words and medicine as she continues on the path to becoming a physician.