Hands
He loses his eyes and becomes all about his hands; she doesn't need either. She feels what he's trying to feel instinctively, laughs at him sometimes, laughs at his human hands. She's too busy being goddess-like, divine, sensing. It isn't fair, trying to feel a way back through the stigmata in his palms.
"Stop hiding," he commands beneath his breath, between his teeth, touching the small of her back as he passes by at a party where she's drinking sparkling cider instead of champagne.
And yet it's only minutes before he's blind, hands all over.
"Hello," he greets their child as he pulls up her skirt.
"Shut up," she tells him, and ignores the kick.
It tends to kick when he's around, he knows that now. All the hours of diplomacy for her stand-in far away leads to lazy afternoons, his shirt over her skin over nothing, her half asleep while his chin is propped on his fist and he's somehow crooning at it. He doesn't know why, nor what he says. Things about genius, he supposes. Good looks. True love. He finds himself treating it like an invalid, reassuring it that everything will be alright. Then there are hands, his hands, his hands all over the tiny silver threads she'll smooth flat with butters and creams. Why does he kiss them? For the same reason he croons. He fools himself that he's not sentimental.
"I'm trying to sleep."
"I'm not stopping you."
"You're waking it up."
But then his hands move downward, and he wakes her up too.
He questions what he's supposed to do with his hands when they're not on her. Create, sustain, kill. Everything is just everything nonsensical. The hands that shake hands with others aren't his hands, aren't real hands. His hands reach hers, take hers, fuse. They interlace, intertwine, fingers bending in half like strands of pale liquorice. Her nails mark the opposite side to his palms where they dig in.
She's laid up for the last month, too big to move, her pretty hands swollen. The yellow diamond lies in a ring dish with her precious heart, and he can almost feel the liquid that's puffing out her flesh.
Hands all over, yet again.
"Never still anymore."
"No. Always moving."
A kiss to her wrist, warmth instead of a darker taste of the blood beneath.
"You carry it so well."
They both know he's not supposed to be there.
He's not supposed to be at the birth, either, that's what paper fathers are for – but there he is, holding and fearing pink downy skin and brightness. Those penetrating blue eyes don't disconcert him, they'll turn a deep and mysterious brown soon enough. It fits in his hands, the palms curved to make a cradle. It is huge and it is tiny. It is everything, every need, every scent, every function.
"Stop hiding," he commands beneath his breath, gaze rapt with no hope of escape from the pink. The shapes. The sounds.
She glances at the ring dish.
There is only one thing left in it.
"Stop hiding," he repeats, not asking because he knows it's only a matter of time. It's only a matter of time until he's blind again, defunct senses lost in the shade of her hair, hands all over.
Fin.