Nancy's Musings

The second kiss finally awakened my toes. We walked together, he wrapping in his rough hand the three smallest fingers of mine. We laughed, and he taunted me. I called him out and he just nodded and surrendered. We walked smoothly, as if being pulled across the icy sidewalk by a horizontal gravity, me ahead, leading by my three smallest fingers. “May I kiss you?” he asked, and then moved forward, his hand on my face. Two warm seconds. I slept on. We walked down lanes lined with icy pines. Stepping past offices with glass doors like aquamarines. We didn’t laugh. “. . . if I like someone,” I finished lamely, trying to be real, trying to be me and not the gibbering fool inside me who loved only his hands, and his eyes, and the weight of his gaze. He stopped, and I turned when my three smallest fingers did not follow me. His warmth was around my shoulders now, his eyes in mine. “And do you like me?” I cannot see the point in games. I do not now, nor did I in that moment, knowing that to ma...

I sometimes know, with all my faith in statistics, that I will never marry. The remainder of my life stretches ahead of me in shades of orange, blue, green, and everything but the (embarrassed blush) red-velvet of a dozen crimson rosebuds on St. Valentine's Day. But sometimes I remember things. My subconscious throws images into dreams without providing context, and they strike me. I compile these memories like the collage of a man I've not yet met. Pieces of April, but it's a morning in February. It doesn't have the same mellow metre, but it's what I mean. Kind of. I mean. Maybe it's November of the following year, and I've had a horribly debilitating accident that caused amnesia. I've got pieces of April, and it's a morning in an alternate reality? It began, I think, with the feeling of being protected: a persistent and certain knowledge that as difficult as my life becomes, I am safe. I remember being so full of trust that I would stake my life on...