Cold Hands Warm Heart

I spy a three-legged chair in hard rubbish. A three-legged table follows and my friend has another that has spent its senior years sitting on her porch. I wonder where the legs have gone, and how the furniture now communicates in its disability. The pieces can stand up by themselves, but they can no longer hold their own. The branches from the tree next door keep raining down on me over the fence, the little twigs look like bones from tiny birds ... I remember when we were kids and my brother called my skinny fingers twigs, “I could just snap them in half. Click.” He probably still thinks he could. I used to run my hands under the hot tap before giving my Nan a hand massage, but they were still too cold for her. “Cold hands, warm heart,” a boy I had a crush on once said to me.