The Grip

She was wrestling a jar of pickles on the rug,

her face turning red from the strain of the glass.

I reached out to help with a sympathetic shrug,

watching the strength of her youth start to pass.

The blue veins moved under the skin of her wrist

like slow, shallow rivers on a map made of bone.

I saw the way her thumb gave a nervous little twist,

a habit I’ve recently claimed as my own.

My knuckles are drying, the skin getting thin,

and I see her fingers when I pick up the remote.

It’s a strange kind of heritage, deep in the skin,

the handwriting changing on the things that I wrote.