hands like home

 

he sits down beside me
like the world finally took its boots off

and there it is…
his hand finding mine,
not grabbing, not claiming,
just fitting
like it’s always known the shape of my nervousness.

his fingers close around my fingers
and my thoughts quit drinking for a minute.
he reads to me.
slow as an old ceiling fan.
patient like he’s got nowhere to be
except right here

in the soft, half-lit country of my attention span.

i drift.
i doze.
i lose the thread like a cheap button.
and he doesn’t punish me for it…
he repeats the line,
gently, again,
like the words are a blanket he’s tucking back in
over my shoulders.

he eats rice with his fingers.
god, the honesty of it.
the way he doesn’t pretend to be polished
for anybody.

he makes a mess at the table…
a scatter of grains,
a smear of sauce,
the simple-hearted boyishness of it…
as if joy is allowed to be clumsy.

and he teases me
the way a man teases a woman
when he already knows she’s staying.
a pinch, a grin,
a little cruelty that’s actually affection
wearing a leather jacket.

he asks me to fetch him things…
a glass, a book, a bottle,
as if our bodies are a shared apartment
and my legs are just another part of his comfort.
like we’re one.
like there isn’t a hard border anymore,
just a warm, lived-in overlap.

he kisses me
in places that make me forget
i ever belonged to anyone else,
including myself.

he calls me nicknames
so outrageous i laugh
and then…somehow…
they become true
just because he said them
with that certainty
that turns jokes into vows.

and when the night tilts its head
and the air gets hungry,
he meets every burning need in my body
like it’s not a burden,
like it’s worship.

dirty.
sweet.
sacred.

he shows my body pleasures
it didn’t even have the imagination to invent…
not a performance, not porn,
but the real, animal prayer of being wanted
without being reduced.

he makes a woman out of me…
not by taking,
but by refusing to let me shrink.

he bosses me with a familiarity
like he’s known me all my life,
like he recognizes my excuses
and doesn’t respect them.

because i try, sometimes.
i pull up curtains.
i build little veils out of pride,
out of old fear,
out of the habit of hiding
like it’s a religion.

and he yanks them down
with that blunt tenderness
men only have
when they’re brave enough
to be simple.

he doesn’t allow me to disappear.
he looks straight through my tricks
and says, no…
stay.
and afterward,
when i reach for apology
like a coin i can pay with,
he just shakes his head, amused, unmovable:

apology not accepted.

because he didn’t come here
for my perfection.
he came here
for my whole, messy, waking body…
for my hand in his hand,
for my drifting and returning,
for the rice on his fingertips,
for the laughter,
for the heat,
for the truth.

and i love him
like a room loves a lamp…
because suddenly
it can see itself.

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© Sreedhari Desai