Salt Hands (revisited)

I have the hands of a 79 year old salt miner.  If you've ever seen my hands up close in detail, you would understand.  My digits are long and slender.  Each tiny wrinkle dry as a mummy's cough as they zigzag the surface of my hand.  I imagine the veins and capillaries within rattling like the pipes of an old house as they struggle to carry what little blood they can to my cells, cells that flake like the old home's century old paint.  All of the fingers on both of my hands are double jointed, which give them an arthritic and stiff posture.   They crack as I work, and the pinky on my left hand will frequently slip in and out of its socket with a jerkiness that resembles a dead girl from Japanese horror films.  My cuticles are constantly peeling back from the nail, exacerbated by me biting at the hangings.  When I clench my fists, the tendons that run the back of my hand through the fingers stand out stark through the paper thin skin against my tight knuckles.  You can see them pop left and right to either side, unsure of where they want to be.  Burns from the oven I work with scatter my fingers and palms, calluses and old blisters live on the inside of my hand.  The worst though, are the miniature Death Vallies that sit in between my fingers.  The skin there is so dry it feels like a shark's.  No amount of lotion will remedy them, no shower scrubber will make the old new.  I've convinced myself that the skin here is in as bad of condition as human skin will get.  Bleach rags and the dry cold Montana winter are easy to blame for this condition, but I know better than that.

Yes, I have the hands of a 79 year old salt miner.