Member-only story
Your Touch
What does it mean to be touched?
As I lie here, breathing you in, I feel life jumping from your heaving chest. Our breath synchronizes until I don’t know where your air stops and mine begins.
You are grabbing my waist. I don’t feel the need to suck in or make myself less. You love me — all of me. Even the ugly and broken parts.
Slowly, your fingers trace my spine before jumping to the constellation of freckles on my back. You know where they are without looking. You’ve traveled here many times before.
I touch you too. I trace your face with my fingers, moving from your closed eyes to your strong nose and beautiful lips. Slowly, I move my fingertips down the side of your neck, then along your arm, eventually landing on your open palm.
I smile. This brings me back to the first time I told you I loved you.
We were lying in your college apartment in the mid-morning light, looking at each other with such intensity it felt magnetic. I couldn’t look away. Those brown, syrupy craters were the only prisons I never wanted to escape from.
Without breaking our gaze, I grabbed your palm, and, with fingertip ink, outlined I love you over and over. I put all of my energy into your palm, internally begging for you to understand my message. To understand what you…
