Before you look at my hands or reach out to shake them, I should warn you: every one of my exes loved my hands, and every one of them left me because of them.

Not because they were hardened by heavy labor. Not because they carried any great burden. These hands just liked climbing trees, taking apart radios, digging worms out of the dirt. The knuckles are large, the calluses on my palms like a map. My mother said these hands would drive away all my luck in love. My classmates said they were the hands of a murderer.

My first love liked to hold my hand when we watched movies. With her onion-like fingers, the smooth, delicate pads of them, she would glide back and forth across my palm. Sometimes she pressed my hand to her cheek, always the left one, rubbing her apple-like face against it. Sometimes she kissed my fingers one by one, every joint. She said my hands made her feel safe. Like a man’s hands. I had long hair, long legs, thin arms. No one looked at my hands when I walked down the street. But the moment I held them out, people would look twice. She was the first person who liked my hands. The day she left, I said, “Didn’t you like them?” She said, “I did. But they remind me of my father’s hands when he hit my mother.”

My live-in girlfriend never held my hand in public, never really looked at them, never noticed the strength hidden in them. Late at night, after she fell asleep, I wanted to feel her with my hands, to touch her muscular arms, but her body resisted them. She wore long sleeves and long pants to bed, wrapped herself tightly in the blanket, pulled it over her head, turned her back to me.

Then my hands started disobeying me again.

It wasn’t that I wanted to choke her; the hands wanted to do it themselves. I pressed them under the pillow, they crawled out. I shoved them into my pajama pockets, they slipped free. All night I kept them on my chest, fists clenched, afraid to let go.

The next morning, she was dragging her suitcase toward the door. I reached out to stop her. She glanced at my hands, and in a voice that trembled like a throat being gripped, she said, “Don’t come near me!”

When I washed my face, two red marks clung to my neck. I stood in front of the mirror and raised my hands. The curve of my fingers matched them exactly.