When this man covers my little green hand (it is green – my mother was Italian and our skin is green as olives) with his large brown hand it is as warm and large and snug as a shell for a snail or a hollow tree for a rabbit (as I imagine it must be).
This man’s hand doesn’t grip mine. It doesn’t force connection. It rests over mind companionably, softly, protecting it from the wind and the sun and the air, like my hand’s intended and natural nest.
Which is exactly what this man is to me when he nestles his body against mine at night and whispers “good night, sweet girl” into my neck and makes me forget that my hands are not little and I am not sweet but often sour and 50 and no longer a girl because to him
with him
I can be soft
and sweet
and little
and it’s such a relief to be those things again
after many, many years
where I could not be.
Fifty and Counting 