Sun-stained hands

Art by: Unknown

Sun-stained fingers delicately prying open darkened, charred ribs.

Hearts can become such messes, you know.

Clogged with ash, unmoving, hard, cutting like the surface of a mountain.

“Can you even imagine,” she said, “that this used to be young and tender? That it rushed and skipped, halted and leaped.”

Now, it is just a heap of ash.

“Even so,” he says, “you manage.”

“You take a little bit of light everyday, and…”

And it looked so easy for him. Bright, sunny as he was. All golden skin, sun-lightened hair.

“And it’s not easy— never—the only way to sun-stained hands is to grab the light yourself and never let it go.”

No matter the keenness of the burn, the sharpness of the sting. Grab the light and never let it go. Because this burn, it is the burn of alcohol on fresh wounds. It burns because it heals. It burns because it takes away the things that have slipped inside, so tightly enmeshed in parts of yourself.