I have hands that won’t keep
to themselves.
They are always rummaging
and dancing and clapping
and snapping and opening
and closing and trying to fix
every
single
broken thing they can find.
And that includes you.
My heart is a bottomless pit for aches.
Not mine, but yours.
It’s almost a cursed thing, how
despite its size being only that of my fist,
my heart always finds a way to squeeze in
some new hurt into the spaces that
before you,
I never knew existed.
There they stay;
and like all things that stay,
with enough time,
become part of their surroundings.
I can’t tell whose cut is whose anymore.
Put me in a room full of people.
Blindfold me.
Spin me like a tornado.
Make me stop.
My outstretched fingers will be reaching
for the most broken souls in the room.
Call it compassion. Kindness. Empathy.
Whatever you like,
but there is a fine, fine line between that
and the way I bleed.
Oh,
how I bleed.
Forgive my boldness when I say
I won’t even try to make you understand
the fact that I do
somehow
understand.
Think of it this way: ripples.
And I always get the last one.
I’m still a child.
I like to play pretend.
I’m a doctor.
I’m a superhero.
I’m the one with all the answers,
all the weapons,
all the magical cures.
Take that!
And that!
Ha! Aha! Ha!
Ha…
Ha.
As the years wear on,
I see that my tools aren’t right,
and that my cape is too tight around my neck.
I don’t have all the answers.
No weapons.
No magical cures.
I’m just a girl trying to play the part that was never hers.
And it’s taken me three volcano boys,
a couple of glass-bottomed hearted girls,
and just about the rest of the world to realize that I
am not
the Savior.
My hands were not made to heal
every heart they rest themselves upon,
or to fill that vacuum inside every man,
one that nothing,
nothing,
nothing in this world will ever
make
whole.
So here.
I let go of every burden that’s been
causing me to stoop and to stumble,
every pressing weight that’s been
keeping me from keeping faith,
every heavy yoke that’s been
causing me to choke on things
I never should have let in
in the first place.
Yet I will continue to love you.
I have come to learn that love
has a lot of ugly before it becomes beautiful,
a lot of hurt before healing’s arrival,
a lot of you before any of me.
My part is done.
These fidgety fingers no longer carry suffering.
Here, let me see yours, though battle scarred and bruised.
You’ve been bearing more than you were built for, beloved.
I think it’s time to surrender.
A spoken word poem written for Atlas, The Polaris Project's event for Imaginarium Manila. We were asked to write a poem of three to five minutes with the theme "Weights: Literal, Figurative, What Have You”.
video link- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2vWyLCM4KE
soundcloud- https://soundcloud.com/sofiyichka/hands