I frowned over the soft zodiac of brown wrinkles
attempting to squint clarity

into my palm’s cracked plate
as if it might be a map to someplace

important. I, too, wanted to disappear
into others but was disappointingly singular.

Brandishing an encyclopedia,
I was stunned to learn along our personal

milky way that there were names for every pleat
& channel, every mount of flesh.

Fate line. Sun line. Money line.
Heart line. Head line. Life line.

My life line looked past repair
A coaxial cable snipped, frayed.

Since my quilted palm was my mother’s responsibility,
I asked her what these alien letters meant.

Every origami starts with a valley or mountain fold,
she said. Yours is the mountain. Yours is a life of work.

Your hand, she said, takes the shape
of the last thing spirit reaches for in its last darkness.