dreaming with hands

I dreamt that I had walked into a vast room with cages and cages of hands, all aligned into a perfect grid. Women, with their mountainous hats and deep black dresses blown from the hip, shuffled along the aisles. A white metallic light coated the floors and the cages' bony metal bands. Occasionally, the figure of a thin man in a square-fit suit appeared as a lamppost among the black and white batting of bosoms and flounced skirts. I did not move. I waited until the people slowly sifted, until I was left with a few clicking heels - their sounds clear and full, in control of their own echoes. Now mainly hands were gloved in light. I first looked at them as a group: all erect upon small pedestals, their fingers soflty bending back and forth, as plants waving in the wind. One hand specifically caught my eye: its tawny palm bublous and swollen, making its lines markedly dark, calling attention to their braid-like patterns that bled slightly along their edges. I became exasperated by this hand - by the way it shyly curled its index finger inward, by the way a freckle nestled in between two folds of skin and by the way the bitter light carved into it like a pit. I needed to read and know this hand. I began to perspire in between my fingers. I paced the aisles - one hand, one stranger, after another. My hands were slippery. Maps and maps of skin looking at me with no eyes. I felt a splash of wet on my thigh. I looked at my hands: two soapy flushed webs of bubbly skin collapsing unto the floor.