I miss your hands, love. Your slender white fingers which you once intertwined with mine, the night we half-drunkenly kissed in front of our conniving audience. How the feel of your palm against my palm was more than a mere brushing of skin against skin. And how the cliched act of holding hands on a rainy evening felt like a night spent lounging on the living room floor sipping on a warm cup of cocoa, a small fire crackling in the hearth.
But I cannot hold your hand now. Not when there are distances between us, both metaphorical and not.
Your last text message was five days ago. I don't remember if you sent another one after that, something that wasn't worth saving, which I may have ended up deleting. But there are things I learned about love and loving over the past five days. Things I may have already known, but have forgotten, as well as things I am picking up for the first time.
I have learned to deal with this longing without having to constantly put myself in an inebriated state, to break out of my self-indulgence. I have learned that to be with you, I must be without you. That needing does not equate to loving. And that the un in unhappy is but a prefix I can always omit, if I so choose.
I miss your hands, love. How walking down a crowded hall with my hand in yours lacks the perfection so often read and written in fiction, and instead reconfirms the reality that even imperfect can be beautiful. There were no sparks, no fireworks, no electric feel. There were only you, me, and a bag of groceries.
I miss you, love.
