She sat staring at the skin of her hands. Her eyes traced the many lines, imagining the skin to be the brown, scorched earth of deserts, thirsty for life.

The wrinkled skin gathered above her enlarged knuckles, reminding her of dried fruit.

She continued examining her hands, wondering how the finiteness of life had come to suddenly feel so tangible.

Her veins somehow looked foreign. Her age had caused her veins to become like strange, throbbing, river-like threads of yarn, sewn to her flesh, invading her hands.

She rubbed the underside of her index finger against the rough surface of her thumb. Years of constant chewing and biting at hang nails left both her thumbs scaled with stubborn, pink, thickened skin.

Her fingernails were yellowed. Underneath the tips lay dust and dirt of weeks past.

She once read in a book that soil and dirt was just decomposed matter, much of which used to be animals and plants. It fascinated her that the things that sustained humans depended on soil. Trees. Vegetables. Fruits. Grass animals eat. Animals that we in turn eat.

In a way, she thought, death sprung life.

She thought to herself: when my body decomposes, it will also become dirt. Eventually.

It somehow comforted her.

She was collecting life in those hands.