Holding bristly pine cones covers my fingers with sap.
Holding fresh newspapers gives me black hands.
Holding onto a jungle gym bar makes my hands smell steely.
A little trace of what I am holding is left on my hands.
Like eating sticky donuts
That's the fun part
Sometimes I hold a shell, or a book, or a record album just to look at it.
I leave with a shellish, or bookish, or recordish smell on my hands.
Call it a tingling.
I am about to hold [I know the name but I will not say it] something
I want to trace the entirety of
Daringly I put my hand out for the radiance to bleed into.
Oh, it is a gem!
I am invited to share and communicate.
Perplexed, I don't know what to say. I want to say its name.
There are palms on mine. My feet are bare, the heels poking a fleshy place.
This is a delicious wholeness.
The fleshy place is cool to the rough skin of my heels.
Ben Beyerlein is a poet and artist, from the Chicago area, who has exhibited his work with the Awakenings Project and throughout the country. A past contributor to the Awakenings Review, Ben is an avid bicyclist aiming to ride cross-country some day. He lives with a schizoaffective disorder.