Want’s Weight

She remembered holding his hand, thumbing the meaty part under his thumb.
And she remembered how she hardly ever held his hand. Or smiled. She remembered how he smelled—soapy—and his minty breath. He said he brushed his teeth because he planned to kiss her. She remembered him fingering her eyebrows. And his eyes. She remembered his dimples and that she never told him she liked them, his eyes, his fingernails always as pink as if he’d just washed them, never balled or got grimy with the others. How he traced the line of her neck with his nose, let her nod him away, came back every time with just enough space to leave her nerves with herself, to have her by the time she was ready to be had. She remembered his hair and how he let her muss it, counting the smoothest kernels closest to the scalp. Her fingertips Geppettos, slowly and for other reasons, him swelling into a real boy despite her intentions. She remembers Levert and the sunshades she took to wearing having learned early the truth of her eyes. She remembers the flutter of her eyes, wings removing her hands from his person. The point of his nose along her sternum, the heat of his breath on her chin. Then the weather, radar, and want’s weight.