Piano Hands
Long, delicate fingers. Such beautiful, graceful hands that stretched over octave after octave with exquisite, effortless ease. Hands that tickled the ivories, the ivory of my skin; leaving soundprints and fingerprints of your music all over the keys. The keys to my heart.
You had piano hands, but you didn’t play because your hands were made for the piano.
You played because you believed the piano was made for human hands.
You wouldn’t pick up the guitar because it demanded you contort yourself. To weave your fingers along its endless frets; to twist around the curvature of its neck; to stretch awkwardly over chords, and pluck its six sharp strings with only five fingers. The guitar was built for its sound. It was not built for your hands.
I didn’t understand then that you were looking for a piano for your heart to play. Someone built, shaped, and perfectly made, for you.
But darling, I was not made for you.
You got tired of trying to contort yourself to make music out of me. There were parts of me you just couldn’t wrap your hands, your head, your heart around. The parts of me that weren’t made for you.
One day you found I had one too many strings for your five fingers.
The next day, I watched a man play a guitar on the street.
His hands were monstrous. One with fingertips calloused from years of pressing painfully down on steel strings, and the other battered from pulling them. Skin cut, nails dented, and fingers worn and weathered from a decades-long love affair with the one instrument he chose to devote his life to.
They made beautiful music together.
Watching him become one with this instrument made for its sound, not for his hands, I realized I didn’t need a man with piano hands. Just a man willing to work with the parts of me that aren’t always smooth or easy to handle. The parts that don’t always mould perfectly to the natural state and shape of his hands. The parts that don’t always feel just right, because no one ever will. Not all the time.
I don’t need a man with piano hands.
Just a man who will want me for my sound. Because I will want him for his. Because together we will mould ourselves to make music out of each other. To have a decades-long love affair with the one person we chose to devote our lives to.
No, I don’t need a man with piano hands.
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