I slip through the<\/p>\n
sterile halls<\/p>\n
floors shiny with the<\/p>\n
flimsy motion sensor lights left on at night<\/p>\n
stuff my fists into the pockets of scrubs to<\/p>\n
hide the shaking<\/p>\n
to have them held, not holding, for once<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
these hands that peel<\/p>\n
at the seams of my fingernails<\/p>\n
little cuts from yesterday’s cooking all red<\/p>\n
and aching from disinfectant<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
these hands that did not hesitate<\/p>\n
as I brushed a patients hair behind<\/p>\n
her ear to make sure it didn’t get caught<\/p>\n
in the oxygen mask<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
hands that did not startle<\/p>\n
when grabbed as I was about turn around,<\/p>\n
silent plea of ‘don’t leave me’<\/p>\n
but slowly thumbed a circle<\/p>\n
of reassurance as I pulled away<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
hands that clean stains like memories<\/p>\n
brush skin and plastic and metal<\/p>\n
and pet wrinkles out of linen cloth<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
hands still in my pockets, shaking,<\/p>\n
shaking now,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
hands that, earlier, closed gently<\/p>\n
over a shivering bird and<\/p>\n
set it on the windowsill<\/p>\n
raised in quiet awe as it flew away<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
hands that smashed into the break room wall,<\/p>\n
smearing meal moth guts and<\/p>\n
wing powder all across<\/p>\n
the white paint<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
my hands do so much and I<\/p>\n
only ever realize<\/p>\n
when they are shaking in my pockets<\/p>\n
at the end of my shift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I slip through the sterile halls floors shiny with the flimsy motion sensor lights left on at night stuff my fists into the pockets of scrubs to hide the shaking to have them held, not holding, for once these hands that peel at the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3576,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12,441],"tags":[4140,216,4139],"class_list":["post-87784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-musings","category-poetry-prompt-responses","tag-2021prompt1","tag-hands","tag-when-my-shift-ends"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3576"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87812,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87784\/revisions\/87812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}