As the young, slight, male manicurist
deftly massages my hand, we turn our heads
in opposite directions as if such pleasure
between strangers were unseemly in light
of everyday suffering. But who am I
to believe that broken things might not
even now be making their way toward
new, if temporary, wholes, the ragged
edges of extremities healed, soothed,
polished by the practiced touch of water
on pitted rock, by the ecstatic
surrender of stone to the repeated plunging of wave?
