Look Alive

Allow me to confess, it is indeed passing strange.

The sentiments that invade my mind when I fix my gaze upon my hands are profound.

To observe their external form, with a deliberate slowness as my eye traces every contour of my palm. To ponder and envision their inner structure, how the sinews contract when I move but a solitary finger, or the skeletal frame within that bears such burden.

Through my yet youthful integument, I discern the azure veins, oft agleam in verdant hue. Those conduits that throb with venous blood, the vital fluid rich in CO2, ferrying from heart to lung in quest of life-sustaining breath.

The minute scars, by design or mishap, that traverse my hand and continue their passage along my limb, doth cause mine eyes to gleam with the history engraved upon this small expanse of flesh on my modest frame. Or how my skin doth glow beneath any light, reflecting against my visage, proclaiming my tender years yet for so much to enjoy.

To gaze upon my hands doth quicken my sense of being. They say the eyes are windows to the soul, yet in my humble view, bereft of context or someone's heed; hands are the very casements of existence.

The soul hath no portal, nay, one cannot merely perceive it through such means. Only feel it, sense its shaping within one's hands, slipping through the fingers whilst never truly fleeing.

Lose oneself in reverie whilst assessing each vein upon the wrist, the shape of the nails, the length of the fingers, or e'en the gentle tremor of the hand, all owing to the blood coursing through the arteries.

Attend to the left hand, where the aorta, conduit to the heart, courses forth. Feel thy own heart through thy fingers, albeit unbeknownst.