Back when I was a writer, I noticed things. Just small things, things I could write poems about. Like how my yoga teacher yells "Give me your knees" to her girlfriend in the middle of class, and yanks her meat into the correct form, the posture of much work and tribulation. The way she puts a block under my hand in triconasana, even though I protest that I can reach, I can reach, the block will just spoil me, but then it is there and ohhh it is nice.
I used to notice the way an elderly man fingers a pair of acrylic socks in the checkout line. Noticing his bored expression which I mistook for sadness, the sad expression I mistook for anger. I don't know what to do with sadness that borders too close to pity. It cheapens my thoughts.
When I moved bodies in a hospital, I touched skin every day. We were supposed to wear gloves, of course, but sometimes they stand up from the wheelchair too early, and you have to reach an arm out between their arm and chest and maneuver yourself around the chair to their back, and guide them in for a softer landing than linoleum floor. Cross-contamination might be legally more deadly for the hospital, and sure there is a risk of something on my hand that I don't know about, but a broken hip to some of these people is a quicker game-over than HIV, so.
Anyway, it's not like we have a choice. When some anonymous woman is falling, you catch her before you know she's lost her feet. The floors are cold and slippery, and most patients don't wear socks. The hospital johnnies don't cover much, but even what they cover is cold to the touch. Hospitals are cold. I wonder how they notice my hands, hot from moving quickly between floors and wings and wards. I worry that my hands are too hot.