These hands hold such magic

The bones in my fingers skeleton keys

The answer to every riddle

The meter to every rhyme

For the heart that I hold in my palms has bled

Deep into these creases

Dyeing them red in my

Loving rage, anxious desire

And the leather saddle on my third finger is

Custom made

The mark of love and war risen from

The same ink that claimed my soul years past

With the ballet of my hands, I can weave

A story in more ways than one

Yarn webbing the distance between two ends

History in every gesture

In fingers twinkling against the nighttime breeze

In clasped grip, sure and steady

In bloody knuckles dragged across the walls

In palms-up innocence, peace for the soul

A butterfly spiral into the

Language of our bodies

With a hand to my lips or a house built in the air

These hands will speak to you who cannot hear

In a swift stroke of graphite

Orchestrated by jointed batons

I unveil a scene born of

Cross-hatching and cursive

And like the left side of a zipper I find

Only certain hands will hold here

My watchdog security system

Against the false, the ill-fitted teeth

For if my body is made of the stars
The daughter of a black canvas

And an exploding sun,
Then the swirl of the Milky Way is in my fingerprints

And if I am alive at all,

It is because my heartbeat echoes in my thumb

In slender steel

In tributary lines crossing my skin

For these hands hold such magic.