His Hands

We have little control over the night, over what our brains plague us with in the deepness of our dreams. The nighttime angers me with its deliverance of him, the touch of his hands, the feel of him right there. Next to me? No, for when I awake, there’s nothing, only an empty space and the feeling of him still lingering in an area that was always empty except for what was there in my dreams.

I drift slowly, praying to whoever or whatever is the higher force that I won’t see him there in my dreams. All day long I have been trying to get him off of my mind, this face I know so well yet do not know at all. “Please, sweet God, let me think of something else.” And as the minutes pass by, beginning to slur into slumber, I recap my day and imagine that somehow he will not come to me tonight because it is just too much aching and wanting to stand. And I am about to sleep.

And there are his hands.

They’re large, for lack of a better word. The largeness of them shows me and tells me that he is a man although he still holds so many attributes of a boy. They are hands that are used. For what, the fact eludes me, but I can look at them and see that they’re not cared for and that to me is so attractive. A man’s hands should be rough, cut up out of misuse, cuticles scrunched and broken, callouses built and dry. They’re strong, frighteningly strong, protective, rough. When they touch my own hand, mine are completely enveloped and I wish that I could take my entire body and burrow inside of it.

In the waking hours, I’ve only touched them a few times, but every single time, every single quick moment, I’ve loved them. Love the kindness extended from them, the feeling of joy at making others happy, at touching lives. I love his hands, I love the way they feel and they way they reach out to touch the souls of all those who love him.

And so when I am asleep and have finally been stolen by dreams, they touch me, caress my hair as I lie on my stomach. They reach from behind me, down my arms softly, and I long to turn and see him there, but know he is not, that only his hands visit me in my slumber. I breathe in deeply and feel the way the back of his palm brushes against my neck, the way he touches my earlobe, tracing it from start to finish, in a complete loop. His fingers reach out and entwine with my own and I grasp them, never wanting to let go. They squeeze gently and move upward toward my head again, and slide soothingly over my closed eye, brushing against my eyelashes and then down my soft cheek.

I want to taste his hands, his flesh with a mix of sweet and salt and his very own taste. I want to turn to him and feel his hands pressing into my back, forcing me closer to him. But I can’t because if I face him now I will never awake, never allow myself to. Thus when morning finally comes and the imminent buzzing of the alarm to awaken me, I turn in my tired stupor and expect that perhaps it wasn’t a dream at all, that perhaps he is really there.

But he never is. And I stand up and stumble around the room and shower, still feeling the slight tingling of where his hands were, but really weren’t.

So I pray that they will not come to me when I come home this evening, tired.

But I know they will. And somewhere, deep inside, I long for the haunting hours that they are there, willing me to escape to them, to him, to his hands.

NinasFiction