Your Hand
Anastasia Simms
Running through my hair
Soft gentle safe
Pulling my head back
Hard, it hurts
Against my cheek
Soft gentle safe
Smacks me again
Hard, it’s red
Tracing down my face
Soft gentle safe
Wrapped around my neck
Hard, air stops
Brushes away my tears…
How can I cry over your hand
as I cry into it?
How can the same hand
bring me joy and pain?
How can you tell me this is love?
If they knew,
they would ask:
How can I stay?
How can I leave?
… you’re holding my hand.
Anastasia Simms is a second-year honors student at Kent State University studying English, Psychology, and Creative Writing. She has loved reading and writing her whole life, so much so that as a young girl her mom gave her notebooks as presents to stop her from writing on napkins, the mail, or whatever other scraps of paper she could find. Anastasia hopes that her writing will positively impact others just as the written word has always done for her.
