Seeing with Fingers

by JYOTHSNA PHANIJA

Books make me embrace my disorientation in walking
as something so casual like rain sprinkling nowhere, losing order.
It’s wrong if I say disorientation when walking in alone.
It’s in everything. 
In holding the gas lighter, feeding the infant, watering plants
as plants are not so organized like a keyboard.
How do you know if a cup is empty or full without lifting it? A friend asked someone.
It is not possible for our disoriented selves.
You are taught to measure weight with your hands in your school.
They don’t teach you beyond that. To face the visual world.
You are not taught to get the meaning of chasing, or pulse, or any other word of such measure or movement.
In your vocabulary, the world is so innocent, never moving.
You place your fingers on the fabric, translating the pattern of beads and mirrors according to your vocabulary.
You tell the world that you understood everything like them.
you keep straining your fingers to make clean plaits and pleats
effortlessly, years of practice is the reason.
You suddenly remember your teachers telling you to look after your fingers well.
You thought of looking after them, but you never did.
In winters, you won’t wear gloves to protect them.
You don’t apply any pain balm, thinking they would harm the nerves.
You lie with your fingers while checking the children’s homework.
You take the braille slate and stylus marks on the fingers for your life achievements.
You remember that quote that beautiful things are felt, not seen?
For you, fingers have mirrors. Only thing is you need not force them towards your face.
You find your senses activating with each listening.
You have to turn off some senses for a while to stay stable.
Talk normally.
You know
leaving poems incomplete.