As the hurricanes in my hands downgrade to tropical storms I find myself touching more and more things with my palms. Not people, often. Not most of them. Still, all movement counts as forward.
This time last year I was planning a trip through the southwest and home, in that moment when it seemed like everything was changing before it all crashed back into the same old ruts. Before I went over Niagara Falls in my stupid clown shoes and barrel. I thought a lot in the late nights about how future archaeologists would stage those scenes then, sitting in the sun on my balcony with beers talking about trilobite quarries and the Grand Canyon. Speaking only in adventure and hope. One night last summer I was in an airplane that flew past the biggest storm I have ever seen, pillars of clouds and whole constellations of lightning, brutally beautiful and terrifying. If I could have I would have read all of our futures in those violent stars, in the lines and the booming noise and the violence. If I could have, I would have put that whole storm in my mouth.
Sometimes I like the feel of things in my hands: cups of coffee in the early afternoons of brunch, satisfyingly shaped apples. A few faces, the occasional high five. Most often, I find myself fitting my palms on trees when no one is looking and pushing wishes and good intentions into the bark and down to the roots. The trees will keep my secrets, their bark reassuringly rough at the base of my fingers, solid and silent and green. I'm doing my best to cultivate unexpected fruits wherever I go, to counteract my natural disasters.
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