My poppa has acre-wide hands with mile-deep calluses from years of juggling work and play. Thick, sturdy fingers that mine hardly fit between these days, like his palm is the forest floor with weathered, weary trees sprouting from it. His hands are warm and homey, feel like nostalgia and a bittersweet childhood, feel like holding on tight in Disney World so I don’t run off. Sweet like honey.

Jake is the adult brother with adult hands, twenty one years worth of scars. Blunt nails caked in orange paint from marking Michigan’s trees. His hands are mighty with slender fingers, perpetually sweaty from constant movement, and perpetually far away. His hands are disaster car rides and I wish I saw them back on the steering wheel.

Zach is the middle child with middle hands, tanned dark and plate-sized like Poppa’s and Jacob’s, worn and strong like theirs, but thin and graceful like mine and Momma’s, tactful and thoughtful in ways the other boys wish they could be. They are also hammers that beat and mine are the nails that bleed, bearing down on me but by god we need each other.

Momma’s hands are so pretty. They are petite and fragile, cold when she puts them under my shirt for warmth. Momma’s hands wipe my tears and braid my hair back. Loving and gentle, she kisses my cheeks and holds me close. Momma’s hands are a better version of my own, lacking my flaws. Pretty and personable and perfect.

Now my hands, my hands, are just this side of too pale, calluses from the keyboard, breaking against my brothers’ backs, and sized for the spaces between Momma’s fingers. Dirty and working, graphite smudged under my nails, along crooked pinkies. I have the writer’s hands nobody else does. But their hands still hold me close and love me, our fingers still lace, and will always come back home. Mismatched bones, all borne from the same blood. Our fingernails cut short, but caked in different glory.