III

She felt dislocated, not like a shoulder or a hip or a thumb, but rather, like a single gardening glove in a terra cotta flowerpot in an old shed at a cottage in the lake country, boarded up now, for the winter. She had known other things than this. She had known the warmth of hands and the rigors of work and the softness and the hardness of the earth, and the pleasure of being a pair. She had laid down as part of a pair on benches and on steps and in fresh cut grass, and hands had slipped in and out of her like language. The sun and the wind and the rain had cracked her skin and sweat had stained her with salt, and in her usefulness, she had stretched herself at her seems. Work had worn thin her skin. And now it was winter and she was stiff and cold and alone. She felt dislocated, not that she was lost, but that no one seemed to be looking for her.