Dear W.,
Sitting with you and others around a table, listening to you talk about the void inside your core, I felt the urge, for one moment, to reach out across that smooth field of solid wood, and touch your hand. The pain was so red in your proudly blue eyes. The hurt was so vivid, so electric, so bright. But that was my urge to deliver something… perhaps because it was something I too wanted delivered to me. After hours of being present with words… through silence… words… silence… I craved the tangibility of… oh, touch!
Do you want to know the truth, though? I am ever awkward in the presence of another’s giving. I am a fumbling mess when someone extends their gift-laden hands to me in offering. But then… when you looked me so fully in the face, so fully in the eyes, gripped my cold fingers between yours, stuttered as your tongue angled shyly over the rims of your lips, and said “Thank you, Nevine,” so shudderingly… how could I not receive?
What joy! What blood! What tremors of absolution! What communion, my friend!
Tonight, though my body is depleted, my spirit is full.
Fondly,
N.
