Skin

I hate holding hands most of the time. Sometimes so much it makes me want to tear my skin off of my flesh. The other person’s sweat seeping into my own. Their blood. Absorbing into my skin. It makes me itch, like a rash is forming. I’m being contaminated. And their skin is becoming mine. 

“Hold her hand.”

Nana’s hands are knobby like tree branches. Dry. With wrinkles and creases. Freckles. Crusted with drops of liquid food. Red sores, scratches, scars. Her blemishes have become a part of her, because her body doesn’t know how to function anymore. How to heal. How to move. How to talk. How to remember. To know who I am. I don’t know the last time Nana knew who I was. The last time she was actually here. She used to wink at me across a table. Like we had some shared joke. A secret. Maybe it was just that we shared a name. Margaret. It made us twins, the skin we shared. 

Now I can’t even hold her hand when my mother asks.