Can the Rough Hand Know the Soft

Lyrics

Sistema del Cerro del Cuevón.
Four hundred and twenty meters down.
A ledge of wet limestone.
And you.

Just a river quartz, three centimeters long.
Worn to a waxy shine.
I turn you over in my palm, and my body heat
brings out a smell like talcum.
Under the lens, I see them.
Two letters, scratched so fine.
R. T.
Rough Hands Rita.
This was your one soft thing, wasn't it?

Can the rough hand know the soft?
Can the callused palm feel the give?
In a lab kept at twenty-two degrees,
you wear the gloves and judge the slip.
But who judges the life you live?

They told me about your work.
Forty-five percent humidity.
The digital force gauges.
Rating absorption on a skin of silicone
that never felt a single thing.
They called you Rough Hands Rita,
a quiet joke behind the glass.
Your own hands, always failing the test.

Can the rough hand know the soft?
Can the callused palm feel the give?
In a room kept at twenty-two degrees,
you wear the gloves and judge the slip.
But who judges the life you live?

So you brought your one true thing here.
To Asturias.
Felt the metallic taste of the respirator,
the gooseflesh on your arms in the constant eight-degree dark.
Did you hold it tight on the rope down?
Or did it just slip?
A single sound, lost in the drip, drip, drip...
that echoes for eleven seconds.

Now you're in my hand.
Cool against my skin.
R. T.
A question left in a cave.
Does the hand that can't be softened...
know what it's giving away?
Does it know?