Touching Look at my hand against your skin. See how our coloring is alike, but the texture-- yours so smooth and clear--on mine I see all the little nicks and flaws, the ropy veins and coarser grain, dark hairs and spots. I remember looking at my father just so, when my boy's skin was like yours and his like mine, marveling at the difference between flesh and flesh. How he started when I touched to feel if it was real. Somehow I knew that where eyes deceive, the skin is wise. In stories I devoured, illusion always broke to the touch, enchantment was broached by a kiss. Only children's tales, the stories never mentioned how deeply runs the need for illusion, how touch demands touch, how illusion is a shield from pain. When the disease was worst, his flesh was such a revelation, a roadmap to his every miscalculation--new bruises covering the undimmed black of the old, joints puffed and gnarled, the sores that drained and wetted his shirts for months. His scalp was hideous with scabs and patches of yellowing hair. I would come in the morning and carefully assemble the gear, the slick bladder of drugs, the clear veins of tubing, the wicked surgical steel. We would talk about the weather or our daughter or my work, making believe all was as usual, that the monster taking his flesh was a trick of the light. Then I would take his wrist gently in my hand and so it would be, just flesh touching flesh, warm and solid as ever. They installed a lock, where they could find a good vein on the back of his forearm, a little tunnel direct to his blood kept open, unclotted by a distillation of gall. He hated it. Knowing how this intimacy cost, I hated to slide the needle in. Still, I opened the valves and stood watch while machinery metered out his water and salt and balm, then removed the probe to pack it away until need returned. It grew easy and natural to help him up, automatic to take the guard position just behind him, hand on shoulder as he ratcheted up the stairs. It grew easy to touch him, flesh serving flesh, though it never became easy for him, so far from himself. He couldn't see that what I touched was not that wreck, but him. Seeing my hand against your skin, I remember you in labor, shining slick with mortal sweat, the swimming whole-heartedness of your work, your fierceness. Watching, I could see how you grudged to be so out of control, given over to the service of new flesh splitting from you. It was like being a voyeur while you made love under bright lights. I was excited and embarassed for your exposure, had to touch you to dispell it--mop your face, ease your back, take your hand again and again during the long hours. Touching the red doll you delivered to light, she took on weight and warmth and your fierce grasp. Her little bit of flesh was such a revelation, so open, the needs of it so plain, a comfort to provide. It was easy to wash her skin, to gentle her frights, to rock and cup the back of her head, holding close, as if a little tunnel ran direct between our blood, as it ran between yours and hers while you built her from our seed. I loved it, serving her flesh-- not the helplessness and need, but the life, herself. Seeing my hand against your skin, feeling the border of you, I want to make easier the ways that are hard. To touch is too revealing. I know your flesh, how it has suffered from my invasions, no differently than it suffered as a child, when to admit no need was your necessary illusion. Knowing how this intimacy costs, still I slide the needle in to give you what I can of water, salt and balm. I know this flesh, and so, when I look at you intently and touch the thin, perfect skin here, to feel the pulse at your temple, slide my fingers down the line of your jaw, here, to the throat hollow, beyond to rest here, over the pulse between your breasts, all this my hand remembers, and goes gentle. © Dale R. Hobson. All rights reserved.