Vignette: The Hands
Maybe the opening page of a short story?
Searching My Documents yesterday for information about the surgeries I had on my thumbs fifteen years ago, the search term was hands. Uncovered: this curious cameo recounts a slice of life observation from March 2004. I imagine I enjoyed writing it, and might have done so while I waited impatiently for the hands to come for me.
I was out of sorts the moment I walked in the door.
Nice old building on what is left of Main Street in the little burg. Comfortable sofa. Pitiful reading material, all the more pitiful after I found myself sitting there at 9:20 for my 9:00 appointment with the CPA to talk taxes.
I almost got up and left in protest.
I could hear his voice rise and fall, pontificating in muted and wordless tones—dissonant and dark tones. The client, a female, responded weakly and not often.
I had been sitting there alone over a half-hour, watching fubsy secretaries come and go, waiting--it was, after all, the waiting room-- and my eyes wandered across the spare decor for something to hold my gaze.
Between the waiting room and the CPA's office where he sat expounding at length in the direction of his client, behold, a door--the modern kind of door with the louvered mini-blinds built into the full-length glass, almost but not quite closed.
As the morning wore on and ponderously on, the sun rose higher. Moving shapes were backlit by the windows beyond the desk, across which accountant and supplicant conversed.
Fluttering hands were visible through the narrow glass of the door. Only tones without words were audible—a movie-scene vignette.
He orated and speechified. He admonished, lectured and mentored. The two large hands pointed threateningly at the listener— imitation six-shooters, bang bang bang,
Man hands made wide palms-down motions indicating the vastness and finality of the mess she was in. Fingertips met, hands together tilted down like Damocles' sword as they passed judgement. Big hands. Powerful hands.
She remonstrated, excused, parried, resigned.
Porcelain lady hands, palms up, exposed the soft underbelly of vulnerability and surrender. The tiny tips of her arms barely rose from the table, then slumped as if paralyzed.
Small white hands, powerless hands, rose meekly in mock-defense only to drop like tiny birds found in the hunter's sights, lifeless to rise no more.
what a nightmarish photo. Your commentary is a reminder that tax season has arrived.
from AI:
Ode to the Taxman
In the dawn of spring, when blossoms bloom, And winter's chill retreats from gloom, There comes a shadow, dark and vast, A specter from the fiscal past.
With ledger, quill, and ink so black, The taxman comes, no turning back. He knocks upon each humble door, And leaves us feeling ever poor.
O taxes, bane of every wage, A burden on life's fleeting stage, You take the fruits of honest toil, And leave us with but barren soil.
The roads we tread, the schools we build, The safety nets for those unskilled, All funded by our hard-earned gold, Yet still, the taxman's grip is cold.
We grumble, sigh, and curse our fate, As forms we fill and sums we state, But deep within, we understand, The taxman's role in this great land.
For though we mourn the coins we part, We know they serve the common heart, To pave the way for future dreams, And stitch the nation's fraying seams.
So here's to you, O taxman's hand, A necessary, bitter brand, We pay our dues, with heavy sighs, And hope for brighter, clearer skies.