A deeply moving tribute to a mother’s hands, charting their journey from strong, comforting power to fragility. The hands that once wiped away scraped knees and tears were the same ones that fearlessly flipped parathas barehanded. They were a source of cultural knowledge, teaching the speaker to fold samosas “like tiny envelopes of care”.
The poem shifts to the present, where those hands now “shiver in mine” and lose their grip on names. The author recounts holding them under the bright, cold fluorescent lights of a clinic. The final, sacred moment is holding the hand until it goes still, the warmth of comfort now existing only in the heart.
- Those hands knew stories
- my words couldn’t tell,
- prayers I never heard,
- wrinkles like riverbeds
- etched by a life poured into others.