What My Hands Remember

What my Hands Remember

         by Frank Delgado 

 My hands remember holding my sons for the first time.

Saving a choking man's life.         Almost drowning and holding on to a pool's rail. 

Wrapping gauze around a boy whose throat had been slit.          Dangling 400 ft up clawing into a cliff.

My hands remember pulling a trigger that killed a deer. 

 Releasing bowstring that sent an arrow into a man's head. 

 Knifing a cat in an attempt to skin it to make myself a coonskin hat. 

 Choking a boy after he beat up my older brother in Germany.

Throwing a pitch fork at a bird on the ground playing Ben Hur.

 Putting a rifle barrel to my chin and squeezing the trigger to see if I could. 

 Turning off the lights and knife fighting with a friend in a dark room. 

 Churning under the ocean, trap under a raft, unable to see a shark that was stalking me. 

 Riding in the back seat of an out of control car, going over a cliff, pushing people out of the way. 

 Pulling a girl out ,pinned under a car, while gasoline pour down on her face. 

 Putting socks on my dying father's feet. 

Writing a eulogy for my brother. 

My hands remember holding my wife, embracing each other, hurried up together as we slept;

 My hands remember holding my granddaughter Madison.

 Cutting out cardboard dolls with her. 

 Writing math problems on a chalkboard for at risk students.

 Mixing mud and straw with Nauthle Indians to build adobe bricks for a hut. 

Reaching out to touch the window on a bus in Chiapas trying to touch the faces of two barefoot Maya children scarred with spot from malnutrition, dressed in burlap sacks. 

 Pointing to indigenous children in Vida Neva streaming down steep mountains deer trails, with their bright colored dresses that looked like flowers coming to bouquet as they met in the schoolyard.