Metronome

Your head rested on my hipbone
where my T-shirt crept up,
as I stretched in the meadow
like a cat beside an open window,
my sleepy fingertips
lost in the roots of your hair.

I reached down to stroke your wrist,
and asked if I could read your palm.
You peeked at me through a mane of brassy dreadlocks,
pulled your hand away,
and I laughed.
But you shook your head.
“I use my hands to hold people,
and make music.
A lesbian's power is in her hands.”

I was quiet, held my own above my face
as though I was reaching for that cotton-sheet sky,
tried to find power in those smooth white fingers,
tiny as an eight-year-old's.
You smirked, grabbed my wrist and leaned forward
to kiss me.
“You're such a kid.”

A year later, sitting in the grass with a notebook on my knee,
fingers no longer smooth,
cuticles peeling like paint on old shutters,
a crescent of blood dried on my thumbnail,
knuckles braided with scars.
But the tendons in my wrist bulge
like the rope of a boat's mast
while I grip the pen,
pulse fluttering in the purple vein beneath my palm
as I make my own music,
the tiny thumps beneath my skin
a steady metronome.