hands
If you’re here you’ve found a “secret” page, where the truly intimate art is hidden. Writing has long been an outlet that I’ve found a home in, a small room in the back of my mind where the fire is always lit and the kettle is ever on. It’s also the practice that I’ve been most insecure in: it’s a bearing of the mind and soul and intelligence all at once, and that latter is something I’ve frequently felt lacking in. To share writing is to open oneself to criticism not just of your technical abilities and creativity but your intellect, and in that way think it may be the most vulnerable art form of all (I say that now, at 3:09am, with certainty I’ll return to this in an altered mindset and feel altogether differently, but truth is not always stagnant so I’ll speak it as it exists in this moment).
The first piece of prose (or poetry? both? who am I to say - this is where that intellectual uncertainty rears its head) I’m choosing to share is related to hands, this whole endeavor prompted by the addendum to my old thesis project “In the Wake”. I wrote this a number of weeks ago, after a different piece of poetry (that one was certainly poetry), and find it’s a not-too-poor addition to the addendum, though having come before it the influence is clear. With all that said:
Hands are a subject I have returned to time and again throughout my life. They’ve always felt more meaningful than any other element of the body. Poets speak of eyes and lips and the curves of spine, leg, waist, rib, but hands… Firm and soft, callused and smooth, a dichotomy gateway to someone's truth. They expand beyond their initial impression, as all of us do. You can learn someone's soul through their nail beds: half moon anchors and mindfully (or carelessly) trimmed ends. How someone is willing to use their fingers, their grip: how they touch the world around them. When I was younger I couldn’t pinpoint why I was drawn to them, the pull simple and innate and unfathomable. As an artist they were a challenge to be conquered, as a lover an object to be won. “Hold my hand, hold it tighter than you’ve ever held anything before, please please please”. I believed that if someone held my hand it was love, a belief that survives into today even as my definition of love has warped and grown with age, with experience. Love is not a singularity, it is broad as you allow it to be. The first time I say “I love you” is when I lace my fingers between yours, even if it is unknown, even if it remains unknown until the end. My hands are precious and guarded and a gift: do not hold them lightly.
As I read and re-read I wonder if the tone shift at the end leading away from introspection and into something to do with love feels cheap and weak and if this should not be torn into two separate pieces, but I’m by no means going to be the one to change it.
To anyone who did find and take the time to read this: don’t tell me. It’s our little one-sided secret.
Otis is sitting on the pillow beside me and is restless as ever for the deep and early morning. He chirps every five seconds as a reminder that he is alive and I am alive and we are alive together. His tail is placed lightly against my arm: an intentional act and the greatest show of love and trust. Maybe his version of a hand hold? I’ll believe it for now.
Go hold a hand, if you can. Hold it gently.