Nature-Human

I come from a big family. One-hundred of us. Cozy, compressed, our layers of latex so close that when one of us leaves the box, it’s always a lingering good bye. Those nearest cling on as their skins are separated.

But we always leave in pairs. We find comfort in that.

So it is, on the day of my turn. My family hold on to me as long as they can, the next in line going so far as to follow me beyond the cardboard gateway, but I greet the fluorescent lights and the conditioned air with hope.

There is a moment of the faintest indecision as you contemplate me. Am I left, or right?

My purpose is sculpted in the shape of my body, the way I mimic your own digits, but there is little I can do to prepare for the pull and stretch, for your probing fingers, or the snap as you pull me down over your wrist. I’ve heard the expression ‘fits like a glove’. It is a code we live by, but in this moment, I realise it’s a lie.

I fold and bunch around your smallest finger and thumb, ashamed of my excess skin. The gaps in your knuckles are valleys I must bridge, fibres stretched to the point of rupture. If only, ‘I think’, I could reform myself, to be properly fitted, just for you. Only for you.

I watch as you pull the next of my family from the box and wrestle them on to your other hand. A finger nail bursts through the index finger, and you murmur your displeasure as they scream. You strip them off and discard them, reaching for another without a second thought.

There will be an odd number now. Someone will be left alone at the end.

Our work is bloody. Our relationship short. But I wonder what difference I made in your life. I wonder what dangers dance on my latex. How if in this moment I shielded you from an unseen killer. It is an intimacy only knowable by a second skin.

But there is no thanks. No ceremony when I am discarded. I hold on for as long as I can, as we learned in the box. I cherish those last moments of connection, as you peel from around the wrist and my body is turned inside out.

You see us as husks. To bear the brunt of what must be done, when you’re not ready to get your hands dirty. I understand that now.

I land in the bin, with the other forgotten guardians, layers of plastic and cotton. Battered bodies, broken and stained. I’m aware of my family, somewhere in there. Close, but unreachable. We go together when they take us to the incinerator.

We carry your fingerprints with us to the fire.