TOUCHING

Today I let my hands remember me.

Hands that were mine for many years

and others that were mine for a few hours.

Hands I never wanted to be there.

Hands of another, invisible and undesired.

I remembered hands I still miss, though I have never touched them.

I remembered, black dove, that you taught me to remember

how you remember that you love the sea,

touching it with your hands.

But I just can’t find my own hands.

And still less yours.

I know you forget them in some corner,

in the pale outline of your laughter.

They were there,

they existed,

your hands

and then your intermittences.

Don’t let your right hand know what y

our left hand did

your sinister left hand.

Cut it off

Bite it

Bury it

Have you forgotten the silvered hand

that snaked down my thighs?

I haven’t.

And still less today

that I left myself be touched.

Beth Guzmán (b. 1995 in Tepatitlán de Morelos, Jalisco)

graduated with a degree in Spanish and Latin American literature from the Universidad de Guadalajara. She is a poet, teacher, translator, copy-editor, and promoter of reading. She has published poetry, essays, and research on both Mexican and international online platforms. A recipient of the Interfaz grant in 2018, she has participated in writers’ conferences around Mexico and at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil, as well as having collaborated in organizing various art and research events. She belongs to the Inubicables poetry collective. Her first volume of poems, Raíces (Roots, 2020), appeared recently under the Ediciones El viaje imprint.