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
