i

We can define gesture as an act of performance. A way of expressing meaning and emphasis through our own bodies. It can be said that there is an intensity in gesture and gesticulation. The magic unfolding from ones fingertips as they explain their thoughts. It looks as though they are convincing you by casting a spell.

ii

Stretching my short fingertips out in front of my best friend who had lengthy fingers. “Do you think I have nice hands?” I asked her. Nothing to be said after that. Grew my fingernails an absurd length about a month after. They developed to be square and aggressive as opposed to rounded like an almond, so I tore them away with my mouth. A year later, I began adorning myself with rings in order to feel a creature as majestic as the girls with the long fingers, who span them around in circles when asked a question about Lady Macbeth in the classroom.

iii

Drunken introspection looking at peoples hands whilst they speak instead of looking in their eyes. They cup their glasses in individual ways as if they were gripping another human body. A stranger across the room pulling a stray foreign object from his cup of margarita. His fingers are wrinkled yet he uses them like a child. It is seemingly a tell of his personality. He is careless about this. He can, and previously has, used these hands to tear and rip and warp like a three year old. I would be too scared to admit that I had let something unknown slip into something I’m going to consume, as if it is my fault. 

As if the things I consume are a part of me already.

IV

First, short, affair after a long lack of romance. Tattoos on his hands. They were the only ones on his body and I did not notice them for hours. One dot one each of his fingertips. An ellipses that goes on for too long. We spoke about tattoos afterwards. There was no explanation for why they were there. 

There are a plethora of people I love that have tattoos all over their hands, words and phrases and pictures of cathedrals. 

Impossible to miss, feel spiritual in nature. 

There is no permanence in the physical body, It is admirable to place something so permanent somewhere so visible.

V

Have never been a religious person. In the throws of heartbreak I find myself at the edge of the bed, hands clasped together praying to something that may hear. I love you I love you I love you. There is nothing else to do.

VI

Beautiful woman, we have the same hands. Same size. They are lengthened and shaped to be interlocked. We will use our arms in unison upon meeting, to be with one another. Run with me to dinner, hand in hand. In strange confused grief I bought your very same shoes. I was never told they run too large. They never fit like our hands did.