Breathing. Holding.
1.
It wasn’t as though
he’d never held a
woman.
He said he’d dated
girls
in high school and
college,
even been married.
Briefly. When we put
our arms around each
other,
it doesn’t feel queer,
he joked,
his laugh so like my
husband’s
before Iraq.
I was in my third
trimester, so we
stood
a little off-kilter,
his
hands touching
across
my back, my head
resting
against his
collarbone.
We held each other
for three breaths,
breathing
consciously,
holding consciously.
It was an exercise
designed to improve
us,
to improve our
lives,
and I welcomed any
thing that would do
that.
When the workshop
leader said, okay,
stop, we
did. We
processed
with the others,
then returned to our
separate lives:
mine to wait for my
husband
and our baby. His? I
didn’t ask.
2.
He was clerking at
the bookstore,
filling in for the
owner.
He stepped around
the counter,
opened his arms. He
didn’t ask
about my lost baby,
my lost husband.
Breathe,
he reminded me,
and I held on.
Martha Christina has
published in The Bryant Literary Review, Common
Ground Review, Crab Orchard Review, Main Street Rag, The Orange Room Review, and most recently in Red
Eft Review. She is the
author of Staying Found
(Fleur-de-lis Press) and the forthcoming Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press). She lives in
Bristol, RI.
