THE GOOD HAND
for Brianne
She is a flower child
with a basket of thorns.
Wears white to funerals,
dances the grief out of widows.
No one in Los Angeles knows
how to operate depression
like a carnie show
inside of a casino,
inside of a cathedral
A soft shell with a hard heart.
She goes door to door,
caroling the careful quakes
of shaky immune systems.
Wears skirts to music festivals
so she can pop-a-squat anywhere she pleases.
Never waits in lines.
Thrives on the thought of revivals.
Jumps into religious practice like Dance Dance Revolution.
Has metallic wire eyes crafted
from unwound barbed wires
protruding through the air with cyclonic bloom
pinching hazel from underground harvests.
She’ll wonder off and get lost
right in front of you.
Knows exactly what your problem is.
The kind of bravery shaped
by her one good hand.
Her bad hand used to wait
under her pillow for a soft snore,
would wipe away her night sweats
with razorblades hidden in lifelines.
Counted little white meds
jumping over the fence
to fall asleep.
Her bad hand fed her
when her stomach needed a head change.
Drugs left her skin bubbling into wounds
she could not lick with Revlon’s tongue.
Left her popping pimples like pills,
and crying out unraveled thoughts
about the lost thread of her dreams.
Genes made her the family hunchback.
Genes made her a harpy of her bloodline.
She had an infestation of remedies:
in drawers, on coffee tables,
under the mattress, (a double-take at floor lint?)
Little edible ants that invaded her walls.
What an unclean house she became,
when the attic filled with chemical cures.
The bad hand liked to threaten the most.
It was constantly feeding bones into her throat.
It painted her pale stems with new skin ribbons,
did all the scratching and cutting,
lifted up layers, looking for silverfish and termites.
Looking for the oppressor.
Even at her lowest, she cut herself
with the same grace that she danced.
Wielding the blade with a plea, lost in music,
in an orchestra of a thousand lovers
that couldn’t touch her
but left bruises.
Other women stared at the soul
she bore on a dance floor,
and wondered how to get her style.
She never checked it at the door.
A flower child with a basket of thorns
dances the grief out of widows
wields the blade with a plea—
a caramel in a bowl of pennies.