I see my hand by his lips, see him holding my fingers there at just the right angle but I can’t feel them touching when they finally do -- only the sudden air behind snow -- a winter, gloved hands, thick, soggy -- you take mine off and my skin is freezing, an active force in absence of warmth -- sharp against yours, almost burning. It hurts, but it is an undeniable warmth. We’re rushing through cold air -- it must have been the lift; it must have been the final run on the 5 mile, it must have -- and my nose is freezing and I can’t feel my toes and my eyelashes are heavy -- but all I am is that small space where our fingers are meeting and I feel like I am breaking in all the right ways, full of sun and misery the way happiness can be mistaken for heartache. Like how good a sunburn sometimes feels in the very beginning -- just a slow, easy ache that soothes instead of scalds.
I’ve forgotten what your skin smells like. For a year now, probably. I can’t even fathom the nuance of it, can’t even conceptualize what sweat must have tasted like. Only how rainwater felt when it slid down your cheek over mine.
Memories are always just around the corner, ready to hurt, ready to soothe then scald. Behind this tentative, soft imprint on the back of my hand now, there is barbed wire slicing through frostbitten fingers, aching fingertips -- but at least I knew where they were, my fingers. Even after we left each other, countless months later, I could count them all through the pulsing pain if I wanted to.
Your book, I never read it. I loved the idea of it. I drank the beer and said I liked it even though I probably only liked that I could convince myself I did. I said unkind words that I want so desperately to leave in the space between us, not hurled against the wall and kept there pinned up against our favorite pictures.
I never took you to the intersection I loved most, the one where you could see straight through the buildings into a peek of sky if we had squeezed our heads into the same frame, touching by the temples. No such intersection exists when we were still there -- they were all my favorites, we walked through all of them, hand in hand -- but in my mind I want to preserve just one specific promise I broke. One hard fact as to when I failed completely.
In reality, I promised many other things I never made time to do, intangible possibilities.
I am making so many promises now that I will surely fail at. I have already failed him in making these so frivolously, have already failed myself in repeating what I already know will hurt endlessly after being the sun.
But as we were saying, just the other day -- but really, it was months ago, I remember, but I’ve been having this conversation for us since then, in my mind -- “how else do we show someone we love them? By making plans for the future, even if it’s one we don’t know if we’ll have.” How else indeed.
The air brushes past the backs of my knuckles, and I begin to feel the warm staleness of summer meeting his kiss, then a slight chill. He reaches for my hand again, we fumble, but this time when he squeezes them I can feel his palms.
I still can’t feel all of my fingers now but I’m starting to count them, slow --
Later, as I’m walking away, I kiss my knuckles. Everything, every me smells like the exact shade of him. My lips begin to burn, like ice.
