Rita and George

     He kept alternating between his palms and the tops of his hands, looking them over, his heart rising and sinking... he had done so much. The things those hands that stood alien-like before him had done; acts of love, violence, survival, repetition, praying, grieving, wringing, writhing, caressing, torquing. And then his heart sank again... they looked so old and worn and tired. They looked like a couple of people who just wanted to lay down somewhere warm. He could see the blue underneath, the splotches of whiteness around the red and pink, the thin little winding scars. And over all of that, in patches here and there, the incandescent shimmering, the powder from his job at the light bulb plant. That was all that he could do for her anymore. Be dependent, be repetitive, be the same and do the same thing and bring home the same amount of money each week. He used to do so much more for her. But now that was all he could do.


     After looking at his hands for five more minutes, he shivered. He abruptly looked away from them and went to lay down in bed. Rita was shuffling around in the kitchen. He dreamt of walking through the field out back and seeing a girl in a blue ruffled checkered dress, her hair moving with the same timing as the waist-high grass. There was someone he could love; someone he could be different and new and unpredictable for. Someone who wouldn't know that he had skipped work just by looking at his hands, someone who wouldn't know that he had skipped lunch just by seeing his face, someone who wouldn't know anything about him at all but would want to learn. And he could redefine himself; he wouldn't have to tell her the routine that he lived. He could even lie.