Take

Keep your god damn fingers to yourself.

An outstretched palm laying on parchment that's curling around the edges.

Each fingertip touching a different nation. 

You can't claim those.

She strokes the cat sitting in her lap purring.

She can feel the rumbles, soft and deep.

Lapping at the waters; the palm moves across vast oceans and brackish lakes.

The trees shook under the motion and hurricanes began to form.

The hand's mouth speaks of love and guidance.

Guidance, it says, we are obligated to show guidance; it is our duty as highly developed beings.

The fingers lay stretched out and snaking over flat imitations of real things.

The hands are many and almost a blur as they flash around, back and forth like honey bees as they tend to flowers.

Working as bees do.

An intricate design of lines and uniformed figures all lining up under a spot light.

It's your turn. 

You need guidance, my child. Except it or die.

And you except it as you try to hold a heavy fingertip over you and your family, over your pride and your accomplishments, over your roots and garden. 

Roots that shoot out from the ground, lying dormant, awaiting the right moment to spring upon the earth and claim its top soil.

The hands peel like bark does, leak sap, and absorb liquids.

The hands are too heavy and the sleek oak table splinters under the weight and groans.

Sagging wood, leaking nothing. Empty whispers that only a baby can hear or someone with dementia. 

I've swam in that lake a thousand times, and I-

-well I've never once drowned.