Hands

If I gave you my hand and asked you what you saw, you would say a hand. I would say stories. I see a past that has shaped my present. A nail that I broke on a swing where the child played the day before praying she wouldn’t have to go home. The scrape on my palm from the broken glass of the days she hated the world looking at the light reflecting off the glass wondering how it would feel to stroke the light, to alter a shadow, but finding that the reality only caused pain. The scar that stretches from pinkie to wrist that brings back the heat. The fire was unbearable but she was dying. I was alone and so was she. We need each other. The fire ended all of the bad memories sending them into the night leaving only stars behind. Only now I have this scar that tells a story of what I so desperately tried to forget but will forever remain.The vulnerability of a hand is not innocent or secure its impartial and nonjudgmental.