21:39, Wednesday 28 Apr., 2004 Link

Pinkish knuckles on the backs of my pale hands, knobbled. Knobbled veins too, standing out over the bones and tendons. Skinny fingers, boney finger knuckles. Weathered somehow, older and more tired hands than when I last studied them. Chewed fingers, pink thin skin rounds the nails. Flecks of ground in white paint caught on the edges of the bitten skin round my thumbs.

I never knew the finger biting habit was shared until I was told, I'd never noticed when I was young. But looking down at my hands as I washed them, I recognised them from over a decade before. The tiny pattern of the white paint on the bitten skin edge skin (a thin line on the top left of the thumb, a fleck at the tip), hands that look like thinking's being done with them. My father's hands.