May 20, 2002

the touch

Today was an unremarkable day. Tonight too. Nothing extraordinary about it. Unless you count the call I got from Marek, and our plans for fixing a broken world. Yes. Although they're still forming, I'd put a check-mark in the remarkable column for that.

Then, as the day winds down, and I climb in the bed to rest beside the little girl child who came out of my body, hushing her to sleep, still feeling that place where she nested for all those months inside me, cross-legged and breech, tickling me with her toes in places a baby's feet aren't supposed to be, I realize that it is a very remarkable day.

I rest in that same place every night, until she's asleep, my mind climbing and falling away again. This night, as her hand slides up inside the sleeve of my t-shirt, up, up to the spot on my shoulder I was just thinking of scratching, a hairline of an instant before, I smile. Her nails move gently, slowly, right where they should be, but this isn't the hand of a four year old, brushing and stroking my tired shoulder. The hand is broad, calloused, heavy. The weight unmistakably male. The knowing is too deep to come from her.

Of same mind, souls tied, I think of him on the other side of the world, try to touch him back.