Water Hands

Yesterday an old woman tried to read the lines in my palm.

Whit my hands facing up, she said 

"Ahhh, you will live a long life!

you will meet the love of your life when you are 30,

you will have 3 children, 

two sons and a daughter! 

Well thanks palm reader, glad to know I've got that covered 

but I know you probably say the same things to everyone. 

She takes my hand all of a sudden and says 

"Ahhhh, YOU - are a water spirit. 

You are a healer, you make beautiful things with your hands, 

but you, you are more complicated than most people understand,

you cry very easily, and you feel a little too much." 

Yesterday a woman read my palms

but today I drove a hundred miles to a river, twisting through the Appalachians

staring at the backs of my knuckles on the steering wheel.

I've read quite a few books but I've been looking at my hands my whole life 

and I still can't quite make out what they've been saying. 

I guess I'm a water spirit?

Maybe she meant that I'm bad at fighting gravity,

and that sometimes I carve away stone at the bottom of cliffs I fall of off

because I didn't look far enough ahead when I was running.

Or maybe she meant that my heart seeps into the dirt, disappearing in the cracks in the earth,

and that I have a bad habit of letting people drink me dry.

Or that sometimes I spill over like a kitchen faucet left on for too long - 

I cant tell you how many times I've forgotten to turn off the water. 

I am walking to the river

And I am trying to trace the lines,

trying to see the signs, 

trying to read the palms of the tide-pools with the undersides of my feet, but,
I slip sometimes.

And I'm trying to feel the wooden knots of the forest's spine while mine grazes the back of this tree bark like braille, 

I've been using my eyes for a while so I can't always see with my skin. 

But I do see the pool's ripples, like fingerprints reaching in circles...

Maybe they look a little like mine, for a moment, before they disappear?

Is that why you said I have water-hands, palm reader? 

I don't know if can be a healer, 

even though I know that I will want to, cry to, try too hard most days.

I know there are only so many things that water can wash away,

and the rest will just have to decay beneath branches

when the forest sheds it's skin in the fall light.

I don't know if I will live a long life.  

I don't know if I will have 2 sons and a daughter,

I don't know how many fingerprints I'll leave behind.

But I am a water spirit:

I know that I will dry up, many times, I can evaporate in the blink of an eye but I will come back, over and over again, like condensation
falling as monsoon rain from a sky that cries a little too much.

I will travel a hundred miles to the river, a thousand miles to the ocean, 

and I'll probably keep tumbling when I get there, 

but when I do I'll just be following the moon,

the same one I saw over the mountains last night.

And maybe I'll meet the love of my life on this trail today,

maybe I'll meet someone I'll never see again but 

I'll tell them: 

I'm not sure I can heal your hiking boot blisters, 

I'm still taping up my own.

But if you show me your hands,

palms facing up, fingers open, I will trace them if you let me.

I will try to touch the tide-pool in the middle, just below your knuckles,

and then I have to go.

I've got a few more miles to walk, but please tell the palm reader

that I'm climbing the staircase of tree roots exposed in the mountainside,

falling asleep in the blanket of the Appalachians

with hands facing up, ready to catch the next drop of water

that falls from this sky.