He held my
hand, and while letting it go advised me to write a poem. A boy who likes my
poetry…amazing. “You are magic,” I once wrote in a letter which I never
intended to give him. Because what came after that sentence was sabotage.
He was the
first person to hold my hand in this way. He was infatuated with every finger
and made sure not to miss a single nail-scrape with our respective digits along
the way. Holden Caulfield once said that you can tell a lot about a person (or
was it a relationship?) by how they hold your hand. I think he was talking about Jane.
While he
affectionately—although obsessively—took heed of the tactile prowess of each
knuckle, I gently took my hand away. Thinking about the letter. Thinking I
should give it to him. I took my hand away before I could notice the perfect
fit of our hands…enough to make Ronin angry for dying before sculpting this
perfect fit. These nails are knives and my hand, when departing his, cut a
little of his hand. “That’ll scab nicely,” I reassured him.
He smiled.
And I realized the toxicity of giving that letter. What was once my
Shakespearian truth isn’t any longer: “where we are, there’s daggers in men’s
smiles.” This isn’t mine anymore. They don’t cut, they heal. In his world of
linguistic genius, he would shudder at this syntax. But somehow I doubt it, for
he told me never to doubt myself. So, at
least for today, he will not be recognized as a ‘was’. He is an ‘is’. I may get
used to it…maybe.