Week Three: Hands. Writing.

Mis Manos queridas, My dear hands.

Lately she had been grasping, holding on more tightly than she would like to admit. It had been a life of nail-bitten fingers, cramping joints. Caffeine at two a.m., cigarillos smoked covertly in the dark shadows alongside buildings, as if to do so were an illicit thing. Better this than clawing at his face, his dear smooth face. Better to ravage her own with smoke and grease-laden food. The photograph she kept in her jacket pocket was a sepia toned picture of his hands. A friend had taken it, focusing only on how he cradled her jaw between his palms.

She stamped out her cigarillo on the sidewalk, wished it was his heart. He could cradle someone else, now.