With These Hands

With these hands...

With these hands I have already endured a hundred lifetimes and with these hands I would endure a hundred more if it meant I could use them to give some good to this world before my time is done.

With these hands I have fought off the world. Cracked bone on bone feeling the will slowly drain from my adversary's body. They have been scarred, disfigured, and tempered by battle. They have even, at times, done the work of both good and evil.

With these hands I have built everything from school projects, to a home, to a rifle and with them I continue to build my legacy. They hold the roughness of demolition and the refined skills of a model maker.

With these hands I have penned countless thoughts, equations, poems, and notes. Not always in the best of penmanship or the most proper of grammar, but many times I have opened up and let pour the deepest parts of me.

With these hands I have swept away the tears of my children, the pain of my wife, and attempted to hide tears of my own. The holding of hands and the pressure of an embrace as I've tried so badly to take the pain away.

And with these hands I have felt life slip away slowly, then finally letting go...some with grin and some with a tear. But with every soul I've felt depart this world, their memory has stayed with me.

So yes, with these hands I have lived lifetimes. It is with these hands that I now look to the future. To the many lifetimes they will still to live because my hands have found purpose, they have again, after far too many years, defined their "Why".