Our Hands

by Dani Dymond

All through adolescence, I felt Amazonian in stature: only daughter

on the hockey team, towering above twelve-year-old boys, shoulders

like framing for a grand house as I outgrew swaths of denim, “floods” 

to rot the wood beam bearing my spine. Mom and Dad must have known 

what was in store: by my first birthday, I had a mouth full of molars,

ravenous girl. After Seventeen magazine lauded black clothing 

for its “sliming effect,” I bought nothing but midnight sky to drape over 

my body, a closed museum exhibit. I learned to stoop like a woman aged 

decades, disguised in plain sight––the better to hide you with, my dear. 

But no garment could hide these hands in Southern California’s heat: 

huge palms, wide and white, flat ghosts. They are my father’s hands, 

as if cloned and sewn onto my wrists at birth, gift with no receipt, femininity’s 

perceived enemy, hungrier even than my teeth. His callouses, denoting 

decades of construction sites, contrast my manicure as time 

and sunlight wear down the collagen across his forearms. 

This watch only cost me five bucks, he says, proud to be a saver, someone 

who keeps minutes captive on the cheap. When I first show him my fanned 

fingers after getting engaged, Dad pinches them with his own to see: for just 

a moment, genetics knit back together, a ring atop the overlap. My smile–– 

also his––can’t be contained, grin and grip in the looking glass.