I’ve always had a thing for hands. Delicate hands. Slender fingers and soft skin. They hold so much underneath the exterior. Folds that people barely see. People choosing not to see. Not many notice. Finding them beautiful. Merely using them for the sake of being used.
Using them because they’re there. Never wondering why.

You should treat hands like you treat a loved one. You should care for them and nurture them like if it was the last time you saw them. Used them. You should cherish them for the reason that it is with those hands, those subtle fingers, those forgotten fingertips that gives you the sensation of feeling someone else. Feeling curves and trailing silhouettes.

I once read that our hands holds a mixture of thousands nerves bundled inside of us. Nerves that connects us. That shapes us. That gives us the opportunity to feel. To love. To shiver. Nerves that tells us about life. About things we take for granted each passing day. Such as letting you know that the newly washed cotton sheet is being rough against your skin. Or when telephone digits are been pushed correctly. Gloves not squeezing to tight. Or hands fitting perfectly with yours telling you never to let go.
Nerves that tell us about fate and how we never see it coming.

Time passes fast when you try to prevent yourself from falling over. Stumbling down. Submerging. Standing between your past and future, trying to find a steadier footing. Something to hold on to when the rollercoaster reaches its peak. Troubled heartbeats transforms into a soundless darkness, trembling fingers showing its shade. The past week turning into a blur when thinking back on it. Fragments of people coming and going, leaving no signs of light for me to find, no faces for me to examine, no fingers for me to lightly stroke. Only questions I’ve never known how to resolve.

It must have been the warmest day of the year. July wrapping its humid air around us. I can’t even tell if its morning or night, the only thing revealing its time is the sunlight. The warm touch of light against her my tanned skin. I’m lying beside, unaware of the dawning day, the new beginning taking its place inside my restless heart. She touches my hair, She follows my jaw line, like she’s taking in every bit of me, like a polaroid picture for her heart to see.

If she ever leaves I have this to remind me, I have the summer mornings and winter nights that shared its calmness through the feeling of her skin against mine. I’m still not moving but she’s already gone. Lost in brown tresses and chocolate eyes. I’m thinking I’ll never wake up. I’ll never leave this. I never did.

I’m leaving grounds, heading back to what I’ve always called home. Not because of the house I grew up in or the nights I’ve spent as a toddler in the backyard strumming on my favourite guitar. Neither for the summer days in all its glory, the beaches beneath my feet or the sunrise that rose each morning outside my window telling me each time that there’ll be brighter days to find. No. But for the gentle hands that have grazed mine so many times. The outlines of silky fingers that shaped a universe beyond this world for me to see. The lazy circles painted on my stomach and the tender fingertips that once formed them.

I’m leaving grounds and I can feel my hand squeezing the arm rest as we lift into the oblivious. The only place where time stands still. We’re moving towards everything yet at the same time never reaching out.
Not a single hand to hold on to, grab a hold of, lean into.
I’m flying and I’m trying so hard to not look down. Squeezing harder as I force myself to take a peak. But all I see is sapphire blue. All I see is fingers exploring mine. Tracing every contour of hidden folds we always seem to overlook. Knowingly revealing the cracks we spend a lifetime trying to cover up. To hide.

I’m thinking I’ll never wake up. I’ll never leave this.
I never did.