I should tell you
about my hands, small
and experienced.
The other night,
when my youngest daughter
said, as I tucked her into bed,
Tell me something. Tell me anything,
I turned off the light and whispered this:
when I cut the beets tonight,
the red water went all into
the lines on my hands—
so many lines.
—L.L. Barkat, from Love, Etc., T. S. Poetry Press