Wrinkled Fingers

By Sindhu Sreekumar

 The little finger lifted —
 just slightly —
 off the edge of the sofa,
 angled the way my father’s used to
 when he stroked across a blank canvas,
 smearing colours with calm precision.
 
 The lines he drew were always straight.
 I couldn’t draw a straight one —
 even with a scale.
 
 He would draw the striker
 across the carrom board like a wave.
 We would watch in awe
 as his fingers crossed like scissors
 to pocket a coin.
 
 My fingers bend at the same angle,
 but rarely pocket a coin.
 My knuckles wrinkle the way his did.
 I had them when I was five.
 Even my nails — to their edges —
 mirror his,
 but they never blended a colour.
 
 The brush in my child’s hand
 moves across a canvas —
 her long fingers
 uncreased at the knuckles.
 
 These wrinkles are like veins
 dug through earth
 so water can reach the roots.
 
 I open and close my palms
 and see my little finger move away from the rest —
 like my father’s,
 when he would stare at his hands,
 carefully scanning his veins,
 his palms gone pale.
 
 His eyes, darker in their blankness,
 knew
 they would return to the needle,
 searching for a vein
 to refill what had emptied —
 red bleeding through his watercolours,
 smeared into the washed-out
 sunset he once painted.
 
 Watercolours were unforgiving,
 he used to say.
 
 Now my child sketches faces,
 shading them with pencil colours.
 Sometimes her canvas is digital —
 and the faces carry creases
 her fingers draw
 from an unseen yesterday.
 
 She heaves heavily when a painting assignment asks for watercolours.
 
 "Watercolours... do I have to do that?" she asks,
 as she spreads her colours on the palette.
 
 "You know... the best thing about digital —"
 "you can always undo the last mistake."
 
 She frowns,
 carefully picking her colours,
 carrying the burden
 of the unforgiving watercolours.