Then Thawed

Then Thawed

(“Jesus touched the man. He said, ‘I want to heal you. Be healed!’ Immediately the man was healed from his leprosy.” Matthew 8:3)

When I sought you out I never imagined we would talk,
though I did ask a favor.
The thread that runs through everything was so invisible
I had forgotten the fabric.

Do you know what I want? How can I imagine yours? And, still
the spindle turns to plait the threads I cannot see.

Do you feel my distance? Do you reach beyond the pedestrians
who never ask my name? Whole, I would ask for nothing. Perfect,
I would not lack a thing.

But these scars and holes prevent the laughter of shared stories
and assent. I am absent from their memories. I am alone on the dust.

I found a lounger, an old television, a quiet dog and a selfish cat and,
after 10 years, found I had sat so long no one noticed I was home.
And now I’ve forgotten conversations that once bloomed like
a cottage garden.

Words are given, not shared. “Sorry” and “hope”; I spell them
in my sleep. A touch that speaks the misspelled notions that we
both remember the silken strand between sick and dying; the
quick compliance to mortality’s relentless decay.

Yet the filament runs from dark, through the mud, through the blood,
to the cold slab of borrowed cave. And overnight, just before sunlight
the thread is pulled from morning’s insistence. Life will not let the
joke die.

My fingers borrowed the gloves, the bony knuckles piercing the knit;
and that is when (I expected Your word) you touched the very center,
the very heart of it. Your hands, ungloved, were flesh warmed by blood,
and my nerves tingled again. My skin sang again. Human again,
touched the most human One, I froze;

Then thawed; then melted. Then settled on the next laugh I would share;
my next handmade memories and laughter.