The Ridges I Cannot Redesign

By Orion Stormcaller

A palmist I follow posted a video about the patterns hidden in fingerprints, and I have been looking at my own hands like a page I forgot to read. By day I decide what people notice first on a screen, what gets softened, what gets buried. Then she points at something I will never get to redesign: the ridges on my fingertips were finished before I arrived, and nobody else in the world carries them. That is probably why I keep photographing strangers in the street. I am collecting imprints I did not make.