“Hands That Cannot Grasp” by Daniel Ausema

We grew our hair into branches
spliced genes and incantations
into the follicles, wove together
sapwood and spells,
eye of newt and redwood stem cells,
until twigs crowned our heads.

Wood is heavy, and branches tangle.
We gave up brushing, used old combs
to strengthen our necks, pulled
the branches back with gardening twine,
and swapped the snick of sharpened scissors
for the heavier thud of pruner blades closing.

Our fingers grew too. Scaled bark growths
extending our nails, our knuckles, our reach,
and flesh followed, filling the gaps beneath.
We lost the ability to grasp—even the pruning shears—
to clench,
to cling to every passing want.

Birds grew curious, and because
we could not squeeze, they stayed,
not in our tree-branch hair, as we’d expected,
but in the graspless wondering of
never-closing fingers. They perched
and passed through, like the wind.

Why did we do it? Why this
transformation into flora, this losing
of what we once thought human?
Call it a mix of can and curiosity,
an alchemy of what-if, a wish
to step outside and see beyond.

We wander while we can, before
our toes turn to roots, before
our heads grow too heavy to hold high. No longer
human, no longer able to seize
anything, we grow out and up and in
and experience what we cannot possess.

Daniel Ausema‘s fiction and poetry have appeared in many publications, including Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, and Diabolical Plots, as well as in earlier issues of Kaleidotrope. He is the author of the fantasy series The Arcist Chronicles, published by Guardbridge Books, and also the creator of the steampunk-fantasy Spire City series. He lives in Colorado, at the foot of the Rockies, and can be found online at danielausema.com.