Work in Progress… 

Dove Byrd

The speaker handed out a package to all the tables. She looked down and the label 'making sense workshop'. 

'Oh god."

"Right?" a classmate giggled back.

"Hi my name is Anthony" the speaker started off. "I hope you all brought your objects to write about." The class groaned, about two people had brought their objects. "It's okay, just use your imagination" the cheery guest gleamed back.  She looked around the room. Shelves, books, computers... None of these things meant anything special to her. 

"He wants me to think of an object that means a lot to me." She looked down at her peeling fingers and decided to use those as her objects. 

She had always thought of her hands as stubby and blob-like, never forming anything right or useful. They were shapeless. And soft. Smooth. Never worked a day in their lives those hands. 

        

As she touched them she held her fingers in her right palm. Ice cold. They usually were, only after vigorous exercise did her circulation get started. She flipped her hands around palm facing her, she could see the crinkles where her hand moves and bends. She could tell which were the red arteries and the warm tinge of her skin made her veins have a green tinge. The baby pink polish was so light it was more fetusy then baby like and it hadn't been put on very well. She had to explain to many people that, yes, she was sober when she did them, just in a morning hurry. She didn't really even like nail polish but she used it as a tool to stop herself from biting her nails to a nub. That didn't stop her from picking at the cuticle skin around the nail. The cracked, dry, bleeding part around her long nails made sure she still hid her hands whenever she wasn't at home. Which was often. "Taste your object" She already knew what her hands tasted like. Lush red #72. The lipstick she wore with black outfits. It was also metallic and copperlike taste. Blood. Salt. Whatever she had last touched.