reading room
What the Hand Remembers
I wake with a stain on my trembling hand, The dream still wet on the cold-tiled floor. I cover my ears, but there is your voice, Pressed like breath into the folds of night. You never scream, only whisper blood, And I cannot stop it from coming again.
I swore it would never happen again, But the knife remembers the shape of my hand. It calls me back to the slip of blood, Back to the curve of your shadow on the floor, Back to the echoless grip of that night, Where I stood still beneath your falling voice.
You're gone, but I still hear your voice— In water pipes, in clocks, in dreams again. It threads through the seams of the night, Finds its way back to my guilty hand, Leaves fingerprints on the kitchen floor, And stains my silence with the colour of blood.
I try to forget the heat of your blood, The stammer it left in your final voice, The way your shoulder folded to the floor. But every time I blink, it begins again— The flick of the wrist, the weight in the hand, The hush that swallowed the whole of the night.
Even the walls remember that night. Even the drains speak of blood. Even the light recoils from my hand Even now, I mistake wind for your voice, Still whispering, still coming back again, Still slipping beneath the cracks in the floor.
I've scrubbed every inch of the floor, But I can't clean the breath from the night, Or the sound of your ribs breaking again, Or the guilt that clots beneath my hand, Or the syllables lodged inside your voice, Or the pulse that spilled into your blood.
I hear your voice in the breath of the blood, A shadow circled on the kitchen floor at night, Still clinging to the tremble of my hand — again.
— Lilith