It’s little things. Minutiae.
Every day I wake up and make a pot of coffee, fumbling for something to wear while trying to coax my child into his school uniform through a haze of sunlight and color. I arrange both pillows and both sides of the bed, and for just a heartbeat, a knife twist, I think of one of them as yours. Gone before it registers, really. Just a pinprick.
I tell jokes or give impassioned bursts of rhetoric to smiling strangers, holding the room together by sheer force of will and adrenaline. I deliver the punchline perfectly, and look around for your smirk of approval or pride. Another pinprick.
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There’s no time to stop. On to the next, and I’ve remembered how to say hello to pedestrians and bartenders and drink in celebration and I’m the new queen of eye contact and I’ll be damned if I’m not getting a promotion and ‘she’s a firecracker, folks’ and everything is wonderful, but for a heartbeat.
A knife twist.
The smallest of moments in the finest of minutes.
I’ll make a move to reach for your hand, only to find it missing. I wonder what you’re doing. If you’re okay.
If you ever have moments like this.
