The Chart on My Hands, poetry by Patricia Furstenberg, was first published online in Lothlorien Poetry Journal.

My latest poems on Lothlorien Poetry Journal and titled “White on Blue“, “Sapphire Planet“, “Light, Evanescent“, “Blue Flower“, and “If They Call You White Rose” were published recently, you can read them here.

The Chart on my Hands

“On this chart your calloused hands
spread before me, the parchment crinkling,
frail along folds,
stained, wavering edges,
I choose to follow,
the grid will guide my trail,
you trace your finger, no need for words
from here to there you will travel,
such a long road I imagine absorbed by
your skin, thin and leathery
as if water and sun hit it constantly.
Along its netting, on the map,
a pattern routing the complexities
of my life,
I go.

Your fingers drum here, and there
leaving fingerprints on the map
marking stop-overs
I only later remember
you’ve mentioned.
There are ridges, the way the map was folded
as you kept it in your breast pocket,
they birthed gorges.
There are highlands,
for good measure, following suit,
and streams,
I wonder if you wept as I looked away,
riverbeds too, crooked, aged,
it was an old map,
laden with nostalgia.

Here, the vintage print illustrates
the secluded path
where I’ll meet a girl
with the sweetest face,
then the shadowed street
where we’ll share a home
and many laughter,
an enchanted life,
among flowers and everlasting scents.
But what a short stay,
I see now.

The uphill follows next, blood stained,
ensnared,
in a poised landscape,
in a distant land,
forced in a stamped existence.
It was all marked,
I see. Now.

I don’t want to follow
the map laid out for me,
why should I fight battles
I never chose to be in,
spend my body
creating ties
that repose riches
I had no knowledge of?

I stretch out my hands
and cover the map,
erase the mountains
and the deep shafts
and believe they are gone.
Invisible to the eye.

Look at your hands, you say.
I turn them over, and there are
the mountains, rivers, streets and towns.
closed borders, forced entrances,
The landmarks I covered before
Blue lines, on my hands.

And at the end of my path
that you set out
in the palm of my hand
and I could not choose
not to take
I see the sea.
Okay, I’ll go.”
Patricia Furstenberg