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May. 23rd, 2009 12:40 pm
companion to "Tease"
Revisited
This is a different sort of holding than the last time we were so close. This is something that borders on desperation, that cries of loneliness just discovered, noticed only when it finally ends. We are just enough of a height to bury our faces in the crooks of each other’s neck, not caring that it’s hot, that I at least am soaked and salty with sweat, that we’re breathing hard from the dancing, that we are right in the way of the couples waltzing past us. We’ve barely spoken. Just a touch on my shoulder when I was waiting to be spun, throwing off two whole progressions when we realize who it is and must hold you for a minute, and then asking for a dance, but there are no more dances, so we just hold each other as the music starts, swaying to the gentleness of the waltz, your hands sturdy against my back, my fingers resting against your shoulders and the back of your neck.
When finally someone comments on our still togetherness, saying with a laugh, “Too much love!” you lean a little back, look at me and say, “No. This is a year’s worth of hugs here.” And then, when the other is gone and we’re alone within the music and the waltzers and the people standing to watch, you say, frankly and sincerely and only a little achingly, “I missed you.” Your eyebrows are drawn together a little, almost apologetic. The breath I let out is shaky with the possibility of tears. I touch your cheek, lean our foreheads together.
“Yeah. I know how you feel.”
You pull me close again, so that again we breathe each other in. Even later, when we can let go for a while, one or the other keeps reaching out, brushing shoulders, curling an arm around a waist, entangling fingers, ruffling hair. It was far too long to be apart. Far too long – a year. I cannot bear to be away from you like this again.
Kiley, from the first vignette I ever wrote, Tease. Thought the subject - and the relationship - deserved revisiting.
This is a different sort of holding than the last time we were so close. This is something that borders on desperation, that cries of loneliness just discovered, noticed only when it finally ends. We are just enough of a height to bury our faces in the crooks of each other’s neck, not caring that it’s hot, that I at least am soaked and salty with sweat, that we’re breathing hard from the dancing, that we are right in the way of the couples waltzing past us. We’ve barely spoken. Just a touch on my shoulder when I was waiting to be spun, throwing off two whole progressions when we realize who it is and must hold you for a minute, and then asking for a dance, but there are no more dances, so we just hold each other as the music starts, swaying to the gentleness of the waltz, your hands sturdy against my back, my fingers resting against your shoulders and the back of your neck.
When finally someone comments on our still togetherness, saying with a laugh, “Too much love!” you lean a little back, look at me and say, “No. This is a year’s worth of hugs here.” And then, when the other is gone and we’re alone within the music and the waltzers and the people standing to watch, you say, frankly and sincerely and only a little achingly, “I missed you.” Your eyebrows are drawn together a little, almost apologetic. The breath I let out is shaky with the possibility of tears. I touch your cheek, lean our foreheads together.
“Yeah. I know how you feel.”
You pull me close again, so that again we breathe each other in. Even later, when we can let go for a while, one or the other keeps reaching out, brushing shoulders, curling an arm around a waist, entangling fingers, ruffling hair. It was far too long to be apart. Far too long – a year. I cannot bear to be away from you like this again.
Kiley, from the first vignette I ever wrote, Tease. Thought the subject - and the relationship - deserved revisiting.
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