What Hands Could Say

You speak of wanting to create like I do,  
to bend the world with color, with sound,  
to feel the weight of expression slip from your fingertips,  
but when you cast my face upon your canvas,  
I couldn’t stay quiet.  
I told you it looked sad...
and you turned to me, eyes deep, hollow, and asked,  
"Why do you feel that way?"

I am not you, but I mirror parts of you.  
And yet, you make me bleed uncertainty,  
draw out confusion like thread unwinding.  
The silence between us stretches,  
like a string pulled too tight, about to snap.

I’ve watched you lay there, cheek
pressed to cold glass,  
breath clouding the window in slow,
heavy exhales.  
Your finger moves through the fog,  
etching your father’s name.  
I never knew him, but you say his smile
lingers in you,  
traced through generations, resting
now in your face.

How did men speak before words
could cage them
With their hands, their eyes—  
Would I know you better in that silence,  
if I could reach across and feel your words instead
Would my hands learn the weight of what you carry,  if they held your sorrow, your quiet need to understand
I want to know the language of your fingers,  
to hear the history they hold,  
to trace the outline of stories left unsaid.

What would my hands reveal to you
What would they betray
Could they show you the ache I’ve tried to bury,  the questions I’ve never dared to speak aloud
In the space between us,  
there is a conversation we have never had.  

But our hands...they know.  
They carry what we cannot say.  
In every brushstroke, every breath against the window,  they speak for us.  
They ask the questions our voices refuse to form,  
and they answer in ways words never could.