the one about hands

You were brought in crying, your hands clenched tight and you will go out dying, your hands wide open. But this doesn't stop you from trying in the middle and so you spend your whole life trying. First steps wrought with first words and you couldn't bring yourself to speak an intelligible sentence to your middle school crush, so you turn around and walk away. You know failure is in your future and your high school grade point average confirms it.

No one is surprised when it takes you four years to chose a major in college and no one is surprised when you finally choose interdisciplinary studies, which is really just a way that the university lets you graduate before you spend your inheritance and yourself raw.

No one hires an interdisciplinary major.

You tell your parents that no one is hiring anyone, but your father can't help but wonder out loud if his co-worker's daughter, that sweet blond thing who majored in business administration, has found a job. It turns out she has, plus two rejected offers.

You find employment of your own making, drawing fruits and vegetables with chalk for grocery store boards. Who knew there was a niche for that? Your father asks. You shrug and wash the dust off your hands. No one knows that you are happiest making $8.64 an hour with chalk.

Your hands are clenched tight around that chalk, guiding it, watching the illustration take form, until the stick is completely drawn away, your hand loosely left holding a stub of dust.

From dust you have come and from dust you will return.

You brush your hands on your jeans, clap them together, and spend your $8.64 on a submarine sandwich and a lemonade.