My hands

I spend a lot of time when I'm alone looking at my hands.

Palms up, fingers slightly curved in, always shaking ever so slightly. I've always seemed to date superstitious women, they look at the lines on my hands and tell me it means something. While they always seem to say nice things, I don't take much stock in it; or any for that matter.

When I look at my hands I see flesh. When I think about what my hands can do, I see creativity, cruelty, and love. It is amazing to me that so much of what we do in life with our hands, will be so vastly different. A hand can slap someone across the face, but it can also caress it. A hand can gently grasp another's, or it can crush it. A hand can type the words that can beat someone down into nothing, or they can declare an inspirational speech.

When I look at these hands I think about all the things I have done with them before. I wonder what it makes me. I muse about what they'll do next. My hands are my livelihood. They are what sustain me, without the ability to play music, to write, to program, to encourage -- I have nothing. They are integral to my being and to the fabric of my beliefs.

What do your hands do?