Holding Hands

Though not a believer in soul-mates,
you are closer to one that I’d ever
get without my resorting to blasphemy.

I remember the first time I held your hand.
I was expecting sparks; a skip in the beat
of my heart; a shiver down my spine;

But when I held your hand (and you didn’t
let go like you did the first time) it felt
nothing at all like I had expected it to.

There was no suddenness at all to how it
happened — nothing to puncture a wound
in time that stood so still — with us, hand-in-hand.

But rather, it felt like I had been holding
your hand before that; like there was nothing
between the moment just before and the

Moment after — as if time abandoned its
synchronic ways and decided then and there
that there was to be eternity in that moment.

*****

And as I hold your hand, I wonder why you had
not let go; and I wonder if it’s in a dream that
I hold your hand;

Or if it’s in my hand that I hold my dream.

(Thank you, girl, for five months since.)