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tim!: Summer Fiction
2004
I am still remembering that night we were in line for the club, the night you turned thirty. I was so excited. We both were. We'd been married for what, five years, but still, I was nervous to be around you. That's how I know it was real, the nervousness gave me away. You had on that black dress, the one with the open back. My right hand was resting just at the bottom of your back, where the fabric started in again. I could tell other men were letting their gaze fall a little longer on you than on their own dates. Can't blame them. You were stunning. But more than that, there was a calm electricity to you that night that I hadn't seen before. A combination of knowing exactly what was going to happen next, mixed with a childlike curiosity of complete surprise at what might happen given a moment's passing. That night is what I will remember as I lie here quietly.
Dancing for me was never easy. Something about the way your skin felt in my hands made me better at it though. Made me better at being a man. Tell you the truth? I could have just sat in a dimly lit room, both of us looking our best, and talked with you for the entire night and had just as much fun. Sounds boring to most. That easiness that we had is still here with me. The use of words sometimes complicates things, when they don't need to be. Right now actually I am having a difficult time visualizing your face, something is missing. But I can easily tell you what the day was like when we first met. It was that day in the Spring when the weather has shifted. There is a new scent to the air. The crispness is gone and even though it is not technically warm, the idea of warm is now an active notion to be contemplated. The cloudiness in my mind was missing then, and as you got up from your table in the restaurant, you left your wallet behind. I hadn't seen your face until I called to you in the street and handed you the wallet. And even as that face is starting to blur now, I can still recall that feeling when you reached into my hand, inadvertently touching my palm with your finger. This is something that I cannot accurately describe. Not for loss of memory but more that the words I need do not exist. At least not yet. I can say this - the sense of that single moment is not fading and I have hope that it never will.
It is wonderful here. That's all I can think of to say of it right at this moment. I hope to know you again one day, maybe under these skies, different circumstances. We'll see. That is too far away. It is good that you are there and that I am here.
You make sure to have a good life. I have no doubts that you will, even though I won't be a part of it. This is the last letter you'll get from me, the last dream. Remember me on that day, the day we first met. It is how I would like to be thought of, my lungs filled with air and your face the only sight before my eyes. Muscles in my body twitching with the possibilities.
