ANOTHER HAND
EL NIDO, LOS ANGELES
I have been thinking about why these voices have stayed with me.
Women I never knew, lives separated from mine by hundreds of years. And yet I found them—in a book, on a screen, through another person's voice. Sometimes only a few words. Sometimes a hand on a page.
I am fifty-nine, and I find myself wondering what I should do with the time that remains. What should I notice? What should I write down? Does any of it matter?
I don't know.
But someone once recorded the weather. Someone recorded a walk. Someone wrote about desire or tried to describe what happened to her body. Someone made a place inside a book. Someone wrote in code. And someone left a few words in her own hand.
Centuries later, I am reading them.
That matters to me.
It makes the ordinary day feel different. I walked. I read. I noticed something. I wrote something down.
Perhaps I don't need to know what will become of it.
There was her hand.
Today, there is mine.