It’s tempting to start with what they’ve felt—a dog’s ruff, a songbird’s feathered throat, the fontanelles on a baby’s head, clothespins, mud, the small stones in a chicken’s gizzard—but there’s too much of it. If touching were a journey, they’ve been around the world ten times, and they’re still travelling. Nothing stops them. They open their own coffins, reassemble their bones from ash. That’s why, long after you’ve forgotten a face, you remember the hands. At night, half asleep, you feel the cold weight of them on your shoulder, your bare back, and in the morning everything they’ve handled in the room has a glow about it; a shadow, too. The cat looks combed, the locket polished. The ivory mirror your mother left you has been moved to the kitchen table. It lies face down at the place where she used to sit. The ivory is yellowed like your father’s fingers where he held his cigarettes.
Your mother, meaning well, said your father’s brain was in his hands. They could fix anything inanimate—not you, not her, not his own sad life. This morning the window that was sealed shut for years is open; on the sill, flakes of paint some tool has chipped away. If you could, you’d kiss his callused palms, the softness of his inner wrists. For now, you do what your two hands can do, dig seeds of sleep from the corners of your eyes, plop two eggs into a pot of boiling water, pull a chair to the open window, lick a finger and turn the page.