all day strangers try to read my palm

first it is a woman at the grocery check out.
she reaches out for my hand & tells me
she could know my future if i just permit
one touch. i want to let her. i want to 
so badly but i am too terrified. a prediction
can turn months into dominos. i once predicted
a snow storm & tried to pray my powers away
as thick stone-colored snow filled the porch. 
with my groceries in the backseat of my car
all sitting like a family, i inspect 
my palm's creases. pink divuts. a furrow.
a mess of lines. it is a struggle
living always in a present tense. this is why
i prefer writing poems about the past:
there was a little girl & she fell out of a tree.
then come the people on the street, 
stretching out their hands to grasp mine.
they beg for just one caress. i tell them 
this much touching is forbidden. i hold my hand up
as a signal for them to cease but
it just makes them lean in to try & see
the lines. one man points & says:
two children. another perons insist:
no five children. i close my hand
into a fist. a first is equivalent to 
a front door swinging open. i had a nightmare recently 
that the front door of the house would not lock.
every few minutes someone comes
knowing on my door, asking to read 
my palm. i want to take a knife & peel 
the lines away to leave a blank hand
unworthy of divination. the walls of my apartment
even begin to fold & ridge: my palm's pattern
replicating itself. everywhere i touch
i am touching my own hands. my hands are rough.
when did i stop being a gentle person?
my hands smell like sunflower oil &
april rain. it hasn't been april in years.
i unlock the front door & all the people enter.
my house is entirely unprepared
& i am embarassed by its smallness. 
i make them form a line to touch me. yes it is 
what i suspected. they are all angels
come out of curiosity. angels in fact
do have blank hands having never been 
mortal. i ask them why they've come to me
& they simply reply that they will 
come to everyone one day. i have to admit 
i welcome their touch. it isn't often
that a stranger takes your hand in theirs 
& considers its bones. weighs it like
a heart or a stone. i imagine a sky full of stones
instead of clouds & stones underneath my skin
instead of a skeleton. some promise me
i will die young. others swear i will
live old enough to see the star collapse in on itself.
i let the future perch like a coat wrack.
when they leave, i trace all the lines in my hand
with a ball point pen. i pretend they are rivers 
& i am a more signficant kind of land.
outside it finally rains 
like it wanted to all day.