Carpal + Sweat

My grandma and I both have to sleep with our wrists straight. Which isn’t what I thought would bond us. She asks me if I use a brace and I tell her I’m not some nerd and she agrees. Some nights I wake up, the same way she wakes up, my wrists curled up like I was clutching at the entire universe and the wisps bled between my knuckles. During the day, her hands make cakes and pies or cookies. Her hands played the accordion.

Sometimes I wake up with my wrists curled to my chest.
Stiffened with the grasping of whatever dreams teased me

Both our wrists need to be kept straight,
Doctor’s orders, different doctors

Different doctors have diagnosed us
with the same result, which is
to sleep with our wrists straight.

My ninety year old grandma, alone
in her a house all her own and I
awake late at a keyboard that spits neon
have the same diagnosis

Her hands can make cakes and cookies
or for me especially a bowl of suddenly salad
in the summer that cut the heat with a tri-color
noodle medley that felt like a mystery

Some mornings, I wake with my wrists
curled up tight to my chest, like in my dream
I was so desperately grasping towards the universe
I wilted

She had surgery, they went into her hands
lengthened a tendon to let get flex more
what a power to unwilt a perfect flower
that has bloomed in full decades over

○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Laying on the floor at the end of the workout in the cold gym steam radiates off of my body. The sweat running tickles down behind my ears and I can feel the wet tips of my hair soaking into my collar. The fog of the world is clear, I’m beneath all the work now, counting my the speed of my breath at the rate of a freeway. I wonder how long I would lay there until that steam would clear, the soft rolling wave laying ground work across an hour of exertion.