dream states

2/8/26

when I have six hands,
  they take me over
  palms reach around, grabbing 
    the scattered scrabble letters 
    stuffed beneath my satin sheets.
  stained yellow from 
  my turmeric lips and painted nails.
I am a girl, even now.

my hands demand my head
  seeking complete control
  my other half contemplates it
    what state am I in 
    to say otherwise?
  left, reach right
  as fingers trace above my eyebrows
with an incising nail

dismantling a ravine
  from seam unsewn.
  wrapping around my head;
    its a string of words 
    that have fallen, abysmally—
  those I will never say,
  or read from a parchment 
held with two hands. 

a light from outside
  trickles in, just so
  I can see my reflection
  on a window not near.
    a body gently lies behind
    to conjure up a life unlived.
  I tuck her hair, her satin, her sorrows—
  with my six hands— behind a veil of bliss.
I am a girl, nonetheless.
    
pricked from the bed, stood up on,
  my six hands follow a masked path 
  I act from the motions:
    the right three of my six hands 
    dictate my lips up and down
  and before I know it
  I’m saying nothing meant,
like a breath across the sea.

calling out into a bottle
  tossed aside, once, before
  the ocean froze over
    in the middle of summer.
    since six months past,
  and I have to answer no
  to myself; my six hands
for have they no grace?

showing You everything I mean.
  the hands return
  to wipe a tear, from my cheek,
    from a midnight light around my eyes.
    swallowed the sea whole,
  my six hands can’t keep the damn
  saltwater from flowing.
it pours out of my pores.

I wake in a sweat, my chest heaving.
two hands strip my sweat soaked shirt.

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