A moment, remembered

There are lines in books snatched from my own life: the arrangement of arms around shoulders, his chin upon her head. The difference in age insignificant in light of rare compatibility. They gazed into a fireplace in a cold stone room. Your laughter rumbled in your chest as you held me against you, our reflection distorted in the blank television screen. The sight of us together startling, having watched each other more often from afar. More startling, your fingers threaded through mine; fingers you'd deliberately withheld from me until it was allowable.

The night pressed against the window screens, the world outside coated in an icicle glaze. The train rattled past and the insects gathered on the white apartment walls and you spoke: "Is this what it's like to have a life again?" We joked about hymns and politics and talked about music, our feet propped on the coffee table, both of us in our winter-wool socks, mine green-and-tan flecked ... yours ....

Yours are fading from memory ... your voice and even your appearance are slipping away ... the reality of the moment fades ... dissolves, too, the pain of our falling-out ... me, inquisitive; you reticent ... the pain recedes and these rare moments are warm-to-the-touch again ... the bitterness blooming sepia-sweet.