her able hands

Dreamed all night of someone who is long, long gone, but not without a trace. I came across some photography of his in a magazine online and my armpits grew damp and sticky as I stared into the dark, weathered eyes of the corn farmer in Mexico (?) who wasn’t looking at me really, but looking at this person from my past who was holding the camera.

Another photo was a closeup of this farmer’s hand wrapped around a dry corn stalk, his fingernails black half moons and the skin on his hands similar in texture and wear to the corn husk. The series were shot in either late afternoon or morning sun and the air, the landscape, the sky, the farmer, his clothes—all set in a monochromatic, dusty, umber pallet. I don’t read Spanish, so have no idea what the story was about really, but the photos told their own story and my imagination ran away with the rest. I should write a novel. Ha!

In my dream I knew that he wanted special fabric to make a larger case for his camera and lenses. I knew he would be at this one store, so I went and I picked out the fabric and waited for him to see me. It was anticlimactic. He gave no answers, only more of the same silly sweetness from the past. So thrilled to see me, but stubborn in his refusal to acknowledge that anything hurtful had taken place, as if seven years had not passed without a word. As if we had just seen each other yesterday.

I think of the cliché seven years it supposedly takes to replace all of the cells of the body, and maybe it makes sense that it’s rising to the surface of my consciousness again after so long. Maybe it’s the great pond of my spirit turning the algae to the top in the spring to burn it all off in the summer furnace.

I can’t get this farmer’s hand out of my mind. I can’t help but wonder how he experienced his photographer.

I wish he could tell me something I don’t already know.

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