Sunburn

Posted on April 27, 2003 in Body Language

I burned myself out on the hike yesterday. My right arm more than my left which is odd because it was midday and both were equally naked.

The left arm has its redness, but only the right hurts. The pain sprawls in hot, itching patches: one on my hand below the thumb and the first two fingers; another along the bone that faces up near the wrist; and the last a half a twist off the axis of the second, in the flat space just ahead of the elbow. Three white spots — none bigger than a lentil — resist the tanning.

I pulled out soothing creams: the first was zinc white and the second marigold orange. Spread them out on the hurting places — “liberally” per package instructions — and waited for the New Deal medicine to irrigate the parched spaces. Before I applied them, the pain on my forearm hitched itself to the nerve that drives all the way to my ring finger. There it established itself as a twinge that I almost mistook for graphospasm.