I Remember

I remember the feel of your cool hand in mine

My palm outstretched, belly up, submissive to your eager fingers entwining.

Our fingers have aged, yours, papery, spotted vellum, fitting in the padded comfort of my now-pruning palm.

Your reprobate trigger index, for whom we drove to Woodland Hills to try to coax back into submission

Ingrate!

Hot wax treatments and squeezing, squeezing, squeezing that rubber ball

Those four weeks were like a road trip

We chatted with the ease of good old friends and sat in cozy silence when the bumpers greeted us fore and aft

The scratched white gold twinkling with a tiny diamond at it’s apex

The ring that replaced your original band after twenty-five years of marriage

Not the original, though-

That you’d lost while floating in the shallows of the Dead Sea during a trip to Israel we’d dubbed our honeymoon

Had we been able to see that day through the salty abyss, we’d not have been able to plunge into her depths, so resistant were her Dead waters

How the salt stung against our skin

We’d laughed at the irony of losing one’s brand new wedding band in the Dead Sea

And here, now thirty-three years later, I remember the feel of your hot hand in mine when we dashed up the beach to the showers

I remember, because it was only last night when our hands cradled each other’s.

I remember the feel of your cool hand in mine

As we drift to sleep each night in our bed

And then, pulling our hands apart and rolling to our sides, our backs turn to kiss each other as we slip away to sleep

These are the memories that visit my brain

These are the memories I take care to preserve lest there be a day when your cool hand no longer rests in mine