Nothings Changed :: Papers

Nothings Changed When you phoned last night I was clipping my nails. I stood at the window of my bedroom the phone cradled amongst my chin and shoulder, and clipped my nails as I listened to your voice. It had, after all, been some cartridge clip since I hcapitulumd it and I was, as ever, mesmerised. Im coming to town on Friday. I thought we could meet for a drink or something, you said, as if we were and always had been quiet, calm friends. Sure. Sounds good. I watched the tiny clippings, brittle slivers of dead cells, bowling pin to the floor. We arranged a meeting and you hung up. I remained at the window, the phone intense the palm tree of my hand. Eventually I replaced it on the hook and sat on the table overlooking the street below. I placed my hands palm down, feeling the cold on my skin. To drown the memory of your voice I looked at them minutely. My nails were short and functional, with sharp edges, not the perfectly soft go ones of bef ore. My hands. The lifetime of hands the language of hands. Here were the scars of a lifetime spent trying to unearth something, what I wasnt sure. My hands have aged with me, the brass knucks have become red raw from the years of slave drive manual work, scars from unforgotten accidents, a story behind each one. I cancelled them over to look at the palms, lined now, the heel roughened by years. There was a scar beneath my ring, whitened by time. The silver grey mood ring, which flashes golden in the sun, and burns red whenever you are near. Do you remember the night you gave it to me? The first time you whispered in my ear that you loved me, and the expression on your face when I said it rear end? These hands, they had held starfish and crabs, caught by my brother and father on the long summers eld spent at the beach down in Sussex where my grandmother lived by the sea.