While We're Alive

Hands

My hands stain black
As if I have touched the night sky,
Or I have shaken hands with death and lived to tell the tale.

My hands stain black,
But not the from blood of machines,
Or exploring diamond caves,
Or any hard labor you'd consider an honest days work.

My hands are covered in charcoal.
I've spent the last hour drawing.
I can't save the life of a machine,
And I'm too afraid of the dark to find diamonds.
I don't fix, or build, or destroy.

Making a mess and calling it beautiful is all I I've come to know.

I don't pour hot tar and make roads.
I've learned to pour myself on page, and only hope to catch someone's eye.

To form an image out of the blank abyss,
And give it a name
Is art.

My hands rest thin and smooth,
Where others rest like cracked, thick leather.

My hands are not like my father's.

I do not build.
But my father built a way with broken hands and feet so I would have more choices