Moments

It tore through me like a thunderstorm, lightning-flashed my breath away. And I had been choking on it -- for weeks, for months, for every second of today, for every moment here, in the dark, beside you -- and I would shut it down, swallow it whole, re-teach myself the art of inhale-exhale. Until I couldn't, and it all spilled out from me, violent and ache in my throat and everything moving in all directions all at once, everything in motion and lost.

There was a moment, just before.

Because you were there, and my head was on your chest, my cheek. And your fingers drawing patterns on my hand, my wrist (gentleness so acute it hurts) and my other hand reaching up to rest against your head, your forehead warm. There was a moment. Your hand on my back, my neck (I wonder, then, if this physical nearness can bridge the other, deeper distances, if it can make up for other things that aren't, and it feels like that, sometimes; and being near you, against you, like this is like walking into a fire -- your tenderness burns as it nourishes). And my palm resting against your skull, your forehead (your skin is warm), and my thumb close to your temple, and there was a moment -- I read the rhythm of your pulse beneath the thin warm skin, it echoes through my hand and through my chest and I am lying there, beside you, my head on your chest, but the ground falls away and in that moment (your hands, your heartbeat, the pattern of your pulse jumping through my fingertip) everything rushes up and overflows, breaks, and falls falls falls, unstoppable, there, in that moment.

That kind of crying, all internal violence manifested in choked salt and hollow ringing in the ears -- I want to scream, but instead I tense everything and almost stop breathing, try to contain things that are no longer containable and under my control. And you were silent, holding me tighter, and more tightly still, your palm flat against my back and the sound of your breathing, and it feels like forever but it couldn't have been more than a handful of minutes (hold them between your fingers, watch them fade and disappear). There are knots inside of me, deep and central, that cannot be picked apart with fingernails and determination; after, when the storm has passed and my breathing slows back to something regular and easier -- something I remember how to do -- when my hands unclench and I go almost-limp...I feel them loosened. Not undone or cut apart or disappeared, but less oppressive, not bound as tightly. Staying still against you, my cheek resting on your now-damp shirt, and you holding me (and holding me, tightly, fingers interlaced) and I practice how exhale follows inhale, and on and on, remembering the taste of it on my tongue. The weather is still uncertain, the storm clouds heavy and ominous, and the force of hurricanes still bottled up deep in my chest, in boxes tied fast with heavy twine and too many knots to count. But. One moment leads to others, and later, because of this brief pause of chaos and violence and no control -- later, there is a moment.

And later, in that moment -- when I laugh, I mean it.