Brown Skin .... Brown Hands

A well of tears spring up from the deep oceans of my insides, the spaces where my emotions dwell in a sea of blue, green and sometimes navy; when I think of all of the hands that have touched my life … Even from the time we call now “once was” (the hands of my ancestors) … and the hands of “is now” (the hands of those living in the present) … and those hands that belong to what is known as … “will be” (the future) …

While not even a twinkle in my mother’s eye … the attraction and consequent passion that caused my father to touch … my mother’s hands … embrace … create … me …

In my mother’s womb … I came to be … floating in the protective lining … the bed … the oceans of her insides … dwelling in those spaces defined by emotions of blue, green, and navy …

My hands grew … fingers too … with nails and cuticles … I so eagerly get manicured today …

I could feel the warmth of hands touching my mother’s belly … the heat from their rub … backward … and forward … around … and around … penetrating through her brown skin … tickling me … causing me to wake from my slumber … sometimes even causing me to find my hands … my fingers … my thumb … to suckle for comfort … because sometimes … sometimes those hands … their fingers … belonging to loved ones … passerby’s … friends … were not welcomed … their energy upset my ocean sooo warm and blue …

There were times … often … when my mother placed things in her hand and fed it into her veins … given to her by those hands so unwelcomed … and yet felt from my safe and warm ocean of blue, green, and navy … warned … POISON …

I could feel it reverberating … spiralling inward … creeping menacingly forward propelled by the natural ebb and flow … blood cells …

Those strange voices … I heard before entering my mother’s tunnel … beckoning me with their hands to abandon my safe space … place … my deep pulsating oceans of blue, green, and navy …

Soon … I would exit this space … defined by blue, green, and navy …

Other hands would take the place of those voices beckoning me forward … take the place of those hands belonging to my mother and my father …

Soon the hands of influence would be defined by the strong … wilful … self righteous and determined hands of my maternal grandmother … belonging truly to a time … what we call “once was” …

And those hands soon to follow would be hands belonging to our community, churchgoers, educators, passerby’s, nurses, doctors, and …

Eventually the hands of a nun … without a habit … hands white as snow … not brown like mine … but ever as intense and beautiful to spy … came to nurture and contribute to my … what we call … “will be” and what are now the hands I occupy …