These poor old hands
are rough and chapped.
It is so cold here.
My cuticles raw and peeling.
My nails ragged and bitten.
Callouses line where the fingers and the fleshy part meet.
Blisters near my wrist.
Dead skin bubbles
white as the snow
Are everywhere.
The skin is so hard
They cannot feel when I place
My fingertips together.
Dirt cakes under the nails.
Small cuts
Half-healed
Sit upon the bone.
They stick out like
Loose threads on a quilt.
But these hands,
these poor old hands
that are chapped and blistered
and cut and dirty
and calloused and white
Are the hands and fingers
Of a writer.