“…so we went in the tent and talked and laughed and made shadow puppets and then fell asleep.” – travel journal entry – Day 20

Poaching

Matthew has the type of hands that look like elephants, because even though he isn’t that old, he has the wisdom of a thing that over time has grown tough skin and sad eyes.

When he was ten he sliced his right hand wide open—down to the bone—on the lid to a can of dog food. In the hospital waiting room before he got stitched up, he saw both an old man twitch and writhe and fall dead on the floor and a baby drop out of its mother without any effort on the mother’s part at all.

He will tell you that the doctor did a pretty crappy job of sewing him up, and that when your hand is ridged and puckered, you stop caring so much about moisturizing.

But I think he lets his hands grow calloused because touching me reminds him that some things come into the world without nearly enough fanfare while others leave with too much drama, and that’s not something he cares to think about when something he loves comes into contact with something that was once so much an open wound.

Sometimes, when he is sleeping, I pretend my hips are the Himalayas, and from the shadows on the wall you would almost believe me to be his natural habitat.