I can feel the hardened globs of glue sitting on my fingertips. I’m about to go into my senior year of high school and I still never fail to get art supplies all over myself. Earlier today I was creating a collage of my favorite female directors. I painstakingly printed and cut out each individual woman since going digital wasn’t an option as I’ve yet to master Photoshop. I placed them on a background of cosmos from the movie The Tree of Life by Terrence Malick. It’s filled with incredible blackness and then streaks of deep reds, pinks, and then a startling burst of white. I finished it off by placing a small banner with the Edgar Allan Poe quote, “Out of space—out of time” above them. It looks as though Ana Lily Amirpour and Jane Campion (amongst others) are swimming in space but their expressions aren’t startled or afraid. Both women’s photographs capture them in a moment of reflection. Ms. Campion focuses on something to the side of her, out of view, and Ms. Amirpour seems to be gazing beyond the photographer. Ana’s hair was among the hardest to cut around. She’s got the coolest dark hair in a series of layers and swooshes. On the shorter side. Ms. Campion as an apparent foil boasts a head of long, straight, silvery gray hair. The other women, Ava DuVernay, Sofia Coppola, Marielle Heller, and Kathryn Bigelow look just as at ease in their cosmic position.

I worked on this specific collage for an hour. My knuckles began to ache at the pressure of forcing my teenage-size left hand into a pair of child’s right-handed safety scissors. It was a labor of love nonetheless. My nails sported the leftover dull gray nail polish that I thought would serve as a good transitional color into fall. The flecks of polish don’t bother me but a voice inside my head reminded me of my mother’s teaching of always having clean nails and hands (not requiring fresh polish). The eggshell white of my nails has gotten to the length above the polish and they look translucent when held up to my computer screen. On my lower left hand, I also see a scar from a long ago accident. I acquired the scar hurling my body down the hill in my backyard and scraping it against the fence at the bottom. The reason for the said hurling was a matter of urgency. The snow deep in my backyard was the iciest. The beauty it gained from sparkling in the sunlight was offset by the fear of its hardness. My dog, who at the time was a mere two years old, somehow managed to wander to the edge of the hill. Seeing him from afar, I ran after him in an attempt to guide him back to the safer, fluffy snow closer to the door. Once I reached him, his tiny paw slipped and he began sliding at alarming speed toward the fence. In a moment of perhaps maternal instinct, I flew my body into the air and managed to gain enough distance that my body was the one to slam into the burnt brown chain link fence as the ball of deep brown and white fur slid into my side. Not completely preferable for him but better than the fence.

The scar I got from that incident seemed like a token of my love and dedication to my dog. I had gotten other scars but not from such heroic (in my mind) endeavors. That tear in skin was a few centimeters below the side of my thumb. Besides the scar, glue, and polish, my hands are quite unspectacular. I have long fingers and a somewhat large hand. As fate would have it, they were incredibly helpful when I began to learn the guitar. The imprints in my fingertips from pressing the strings so forcefully have since faded between practices.

Overall I like my hands. What they lack in delicate femininity them make up for in practicality. They get the job done.

—By Stella L., 17