There’s something my mom always repeats when we spend time together:
She says, “I looked at your hands when you were born. I was mesmerized.”
“They looked like they had a manicure.”
I stared at your hands for hours, she says,
and kissed your tiny, long fingers—small, yet so elegant for your bod

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Every time she says that, my eyes well up.

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With those hands, I touch my mother.
Now, with these grown-up fingers, I caress her—
I trace them over her heart, through her hair.
In those moments, I flow into her.
I came from her.

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I think my hands are the truest way I show love to my mother.
it’s how I express my joy for being alive too.
So many of my feelings come out through my hands.
They’re how I hold on to the world.

 

My hands are my toys.
Sometimes I catch myself staring at them for hours too.
Like when I’m typing on the keyboard.
Or clicking a Lego into place.

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Fleshy little rods spaced out to widen my surface area!
I study my fingers—these visible extensions of my mind

 

Sometimes, when I touch the ones I love, they say,
“Your fingers are so strong.”
And they are.
They hold power—the power to transform.
They came into the world with my mother’s love.
With the love my mom had for my dad, too.
They’re parts of me that were born from love.
Magical little wands that let me feel so much joy in this life.

 

I could stretch them out and whisper abracadabra or lumos.
As long as they exist, I can create.
I want to keep recreating

my mother, my father, my grandmother, love itself.
I want to honor them through everything I make, for as long as I live.

 

                                             God, please let them always be here.
 
                                                 That’s the prayer.