Hands

Here are my hands with my heart in them.
They keep secrets, like how to clap for rain.
They are hills too steep for silence
but, they are well-trained children who long
and are never allowed out to play.

Sometimes my hands are cut off
as I have learned too much about duty.
Or they can be beggars, creeping from under my sleeves
to tug at the hems of the blessed.
I wish they might be thieves instead

to steal for me autonomy.
Oh! They are blindly obedient these
caged birds, forgetting they could be free.
They are cold, my hands, and empty.
Yet, they are temples of the holy and

opposites. Left and right unite in the sign for prayer.
One hand is darkness, the other the light.
They knock at the door of my soul
and engage the divine listening there.
Mostly they are trying to heal.

To live, unadorned, made wiser by their grief.
They want to speak their beautiful secrets
like how they are my heart. And when I open them
how they spill the rain. How they call and answer.
Little mirrors catching, letting go of everything.


- Terilynn Graham Freedman