Vital Signs

Various bits of her were fizzing and buzzing: her wrist, her lower spine, her breastbone. She felt like that board game, Operation, where body parts light up, electric, at the slightest touch.

Claire and I started making way for each other, the small courtesies one shows a sick person. Wide berths in the hallway and boundaries observed in bed. We slept in lanes, did not visit each other in the night, even for the sexless embrace, to extinguish each other’s insecurities, to see what comfort there wasn’t in someone else’s cold frame. Skill