*Katherine C. White, MD, is a retired neonatologist. Her work appears in* Hektoen International, 1807, An Art & Literary Journal *and the zine,* Depression Walks.

Sometime in the early 1980s, when HIV was a newly looming menace, we had to start wearing gloves to care for our NICU patients. I balked at this, and not just because it might be harder to start IVs and draw labs. (It was, at first, but we got used to it). There was something about the direct contact of my fingers with my little patients’ skin that I missed. Surely it was more comforting for an infant to be touched by the warmth of my hands unmediated by latex, and it certainly was for me.

The advent of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic took this distancing phenomenon to a whole new level. Hospital workers in the pre-vaccine phase of the outbreak had to suit up like astronauts embarking on space travel just to keep everyone safe while doing their jobs. They had to decontaminate before any contact with their families when they got home—showering, throwing their clothes in the wash, as soon as they came in the door.

So I was especially touched by Kirsten Myers’ poem “Hands ” in the Fall 2020 issue of Intima, particularly the poignant final lines:

I wish I could have held that mother’s
hand

like my hand is held

in a time with no touch

A time with no touch—that terrible time in the pandemic’s early days, from which we still haven’t come close to recovering. I sense in Myers’ words a longing for the most basic human contact, the instinctual warmth on which our flourishing as human beings depends, that often-undervalued sense of touch. My own poem, also titled “Hands” in the Spring 2022 issue of Intima, expresses the other side of the coin of touch deprivation: the joy and nourishment of the laying on of hands, even when one’s hand is gloved.

Our species has been deeply wounded by these months of isolation, of keeping our distance, the loss of the handshake, the constraints that prevent holding a new mother’s hand, the prohibition against holding a loved one’s hand as they are dying. I can’t help but think this undermining of a vital form of human connection has contributed to the emotional distress, unrest and bitter division besetting our societies today. It is my fervent hope we can recover from this deep wound to our humanity and reclaim once more the rich fullness of the kingdom of touch.

Katherine C. White, MD, is a retired neonatologist. Her work appears in Hektoen International, 1807, An Art & Literary Journal and the zine, Depression Walks.