Hands

I hate my hands.

I hate the stubby fingers, the wrinkles, the scars.

They don't fit the rest of my appearance.

I suppose it's because you can change hair, clear up skin, put contacts in, but you can't get new hands.

My hands are the constant truth and reminder of who I was, what I've come from. What I've overcome.

So when I look down at my hands, all scarred and fragile, they have fragments of you in them.

Little shards of you and what you’ve done to me.

And when he puts his hand in mine it feels so, foreign. Like I'm learning to ride a bike for the first time. or I have to learn how to write with my feet.

Your hand was so familiar.

I miss that feeling of being excited as your hand even neared mine. It sent shivers down my spine the first time you took it.

And every time after that, it sent waves of emotion rolling through my body.

I knew every inch of your hand.

the scar on your left hand, the line on your upper hand to the right of your middle finger, the veins on your wrist.

Your hands were the most beautiful.

The most secure. Soft, strong, blistered, I was encompassed by your hand. Your thumb always grazing on the top of mine, back and forth and back and forth, along my knuckles, sometimes down my wrist, just to comfort me.

I wonder if you ever knew how much that affected me- the fact that it sent shivers down my spine or could bring tears to my eyes.

My hand in yours made mine feel safe. Like the familiarity of coming home. The smell of the house. It made my hands feel like the rest of me.

So when I look at my hands now, and when he holds mine, I get this feeling of disappointment. I don't feel excitement, I don't feel chills, I don't feel loved, and it isn't encompassing.

Which leads me to the worrisome thought that I won't ever love again like I loved you.

I miss being familiar with your hands.

You always pick at them now, the blisters, you crack your knuckles. You’re always reckless with your hands. Almost like they don't have a purpose.

Mine stay hidden now. Under a napkin at dinner, or under my leg while I'm sitting.

I try and paint them with polish and cover their ugliness but nothing will seem to extract the fragments of you I see in them.

I don't know what else to do, and I suppose you don't either.

but life goes on and fragments remain and now we’re both stuck with the restlessness of our hands.

I hope she understands how special they are.

I hope they send shivers down her spine.

I hope they encompass her and make her feel safe.

But most of all, I want you to be happy. because that means that the fragments will lift from my hands, and they’ll become the blank canvas they once were, before your shrapnel of desire was implanted into them.

I want you to take those hands and leave marks on others, so mine will be the blank canvas I've always wanted them to be.