The hands know the structure better than names:
They remember the thick, sticky viscosity of plasma,
The crunch of ampoules, the cold of steel clamps
Entering the muscle, searching for the unseen edge.
The tourniquet closes the circle, arrests the flow.
Fingertips catch the rhythm, thinning with each touch,
Until it becomes a distant, muffled signal –
A vibration at the very edge of vanishing.
At night, when the mind falls into numbness,
The body does not sleep. It keeps a sleepless watch:
In the dark, fingers retrace the old incision,
Touching the void, pressing imaginary bandages.
They sew the emptiness with a tight, invisible stitch,
Tying knots in the air with the taste of iron.
Palms are more honest than eyes and flat mirrors –
In them is held the root of fragile endurance.
Tactile archive. A scar with its own code.
Warmth bleeds through the thin rubber.
The grip holds the thread above the abyss of time.
Fastening to life. Blindly. To the very end.