Reaching across the table, for the little wooden salt shaker that once belonged to an old neighbor, felt at once like a reminder, an admittance of all the many failures in my life, yet also a salve to the sorrows in my heart. In reaching out, my hand within centimeters of yours, I could feel the warmth of your skin and remember all the many times we had lain next to each other, so closely that any other species would have mistaken us for a single eight legged, two headed creature with four breasts and a large pink splotch filling one side of our collective stomach, circling round to an unseen back of this unique creature. I could feel that pink skin with my mind, remember the way it was ever so slightly more textured than the rest of your body. When we first met, were first discovering each others outsides while coyly denying the other our insides, I remember your hesitations each time I touched you there, your body slightly stiffening as your fingers on me would freeze. Apologies would tumble from your lips and it felt then as though in the flash of an instant, you might flee my bed, and my life, but you stayed, you listened when I'd tell you I thought you were beautiful, pink splotch and all. Eventually you believed it too, or at least believed that I believed it enough to let the thought take up residence inside you, even if it was just a month to month tenancy. The years of exploring each others bodies did give way to us each letting bits and pieces of our insides spill out until some point at which there was no difference between our insides and our outsides, we had become a togetherness wherein our words and laughter would sometimes fill the air and at other times we would just move about the day, not needing to speak at all, each knowing what the other was thinking, feeling, wanting. And then last week when my head hurt and work had been a disaster and I came home and the furnace had resoundingly quit without notice, and the dog ate the beat up old couch pillow that my grandfather's mother had cross stitched when she was eight and you said something to me, I don't even recollect what it was anymore, I screamed at you, with a voice that welled up from inside as though I had been hiding it for a thousand years. And you stopped speaking to me. Not a word has fallen from your tongue since. My apologies, my begging, my pleas have all been met with a stare so icy it bested the frozen fjords of Skarsvåg. This emptiness now makes my skin feel as though it were made of burnt rice paper and that in even a slight breeze, I could shatter, being lost to the four winds. Each time the sun sets, we silently get into bed, you firmly planted on your side and me longing with every pore of my body to reach out and have your hand meet mine.
