praise clumsy thumbs, praise ma calling back at 2am when nothing is wrong, praise her cracked feet + her pockets of worry, praise chipping nail polish + sweaty-palmed handholds, praise fingers + what they say, what they don’t, praise cracking knuckles + loose laced shoes, praise shoes + soles + stink, praise the accidental-on-purpose risk of the butt dial, praise your right hand in your love’s right back pocket, praise butts… butts too, praise too, praise too much, too woman, too brown, too sexual, too – you know what I never asked you, so small + entitled, the word too, too much weight in those two little O’s next to a T, praise tea + Dida’s fresh-from-the-tin butter cookies, praise the flower-plucking end-bringing aunties, praise the resilience of the paper cut, the resilience of roaches + roti + rust, praise ancestral trauma passed down like heartburn or hair loss, praise fingers + what they say, what they don’t or can’t, or won’t, praise the distance between hands + loves + hands + hurt, praise hangnails + hangovers + that one sip of Hennessy that didn’t feel all that special, praise Dida’s streams of laughter after Dadu farts, praise the simple hilarity of farts, a reminder to let our bodies be bodies, praise our skin suits + how they all crumble differently, praise the funny bone for eternally embodying irony, praise midnight butter-sugar-toast with dad, praise sand that lingers after you’ve left the shore, praise the moon + her phases, praise our lunacy + the stupid giddiness of mooning, praise the stupid giddiness of being swept up in a crush, the stupidity of loving and longing, but mostly, praise the butt dial.
