Work Text:
Logic dictates I should not reach.
My hand hovers — millimeters breach
the gulf between my ordered mind
and ochre palms these humans left behind.
Ten thousand years, perhaps fifteen,
since fingers pressed this limestone screen.
I calculate the pigment's age,
the method, mixture — yet I rage
(illogical, this word, and yet
no other term describes the fret
of wanting coursing through my veins)
to know what moved across their brains
when they stretched high to leave their mark.
What made them illuminate this dark?
Was it fear? Exultation? Love?
What unnamed thing were they speaking of?
My IDIC stands between
my flesh and theirs, this ancient scene.
Infinite diversity — I know the creed,
but oh, to feel what made them need
to say "I lived, I was, I am,"
in handprints older than my clan.
The cave is cold. My blood runs hot.
I want what Vulcans should want not:
to press my palm where theirs once lay,
to cross the centuries, the day,
to let their grief, their joy, their fear
dissolve the distance, bring them near.
But I withdraw. Stand straight. Refrain.
(The wanting is a kind of pain.)
These ancient hands reach out through time—
and I, controlled, cannot touch them to mine.