Small Hands

I wish I had bigger hands.

Hands large enough to grasp the big things.

Things like how to grow up.

Like how to handle a life you don’t want but must have.

Like how not to hold onto the people who are leaving.

Like how to be a better woman.

But my hands stopped growing when I was young.

Fingers smashed and broken by an unyielding force and my own shame in mistakes.

But everything around me seems so big.

The mug in front of me requires both child-size hands to pick it up.

And when I hold it against the window pane

I can’t see anything besides blades of grass between my fingers.

I just wish they’d wrote a book

A book on how to make your hands the size of all your needs.

Because I’m stretching pinky to thumb

But I can’t grasp anything.