The pinky is emotion. It is a dream. It is a white’s white, a blue’s blue, and a black’s black. It is a train traveling a rail that cannot be seen. It is a ringing anthem to explore the rough texture that hides behind our smooth skin. It always seems like a painting made up of a thousand kernels of sand with an improbable placement.

The ring finger is commitment. It rings of the hymns sung from every church on Sunday. It is a large sky with complex clouds as far as the eye can see, but it is also a giant ocean of which only I am entrusted the charts. It is glass willingly shattered that will never again be whole. It is a song that must be written over and over.

The index finger is heart. Always falling down a never ending pit, the fortune teller reads the palm. We burn her tea leaves and grasp towards straws that feel as hot as the sun scorching our faces. The burns fade to the frosty cold ice that becomes harder and harder to touch until we feel our soul is no longer our own. The final unbearable frostbite was never our concern.

The thumb is mind. Like a nail driven through wood over and over we hear a screaming chorus through empty space whose sound does not travel. There is a fractured painting that mirrors the tattoos we use to cover our bodies as we gawk at the politician’s pride when the crowds scream only the most obvious of chants. Oblivion seems the only escape.

The middle finger is loneliness. Like walking penrose stairs we find ourselves trapped. Stranded, we look down the platform hoping for the next train. It is what remains on a broken screen when the same number is dialed again and again. It stands tallest in ourselves, and it exudes a sweet irony each time it’s the first to meet another. A clasp forms, a bond is made, and in a trick of the light a glint previously unseen shines brightly.