the darker shades

They once were so soft and
so marvelous to the touch,
as if she had actually swallowed
spiritual velvet, felt it caress
her tongue, felt it
glide its way down
her throat, wrapping around
her stomach and
becoming a part of her,
inside and out and
she knew.

Now they would always stare at
her hands—the way they
looked and the way they moved, as
unseen bullets from
one button to the next, but
that wasn’t what they were really
looking at and
she knew.

It was the darker shades—
below her thumb, on top of most
knuckles, two stretched out on
each index finger—the 
physical memories of
time and age and accidents and
she knew each one by name and
winced every time because
she would always stare at them.

She tried wearing
gloves to hide them from herself.
They were white velvet gloves that she would
caress and the softness would
infiltrate her heart and her mind but
the gloves were older now
and had darker shades
too.