My Hands

I know it’s stupid,

but I love my hands.

They might be white as a vampire’s skin

with red blotches

and blood from hitting my pillow too hard.

They shake a lot

when I talk real loud

or when I forget breakfast and dinner in the same day.

I have lots of blushing fingertips

and thin crooked nails

because I bite my hands when I get nervous

and I’m nervous almost all the time.

Don’t ask me why cause I don’t know.

The skin around my scratched knuckles is all bunched up

cause my fingers are almost always curled around

my favorite pen

And when I put down the pen in the rare moment

I don’t feel like writing

the stretched skin across my knobby knuckles

won’t shrink back down again.

I even write and read when I’m walking,

but I walk into stuff a lot,

so my hands outstretched with a book in them

get banged up with red blood most people mistake for paint.

My palms have a strong heart line.

I guess when I was born

my hands decided to stick that abnormal inverted line

across the palm of my hand.

With all these scratches

and wrinkles

and thin skin

and bad nails

my hands look more destroyed than

a newspaper that got in a fight with a paper shredder.

But what they look like doesn’t matter.

It’s the art they create.

And that’s why when I pick up my favorite pen

with the purple ink

that fits perfectly into my left hand

they feel flawless.