Story: The Fist

I used to wonder what you clutched inside your fist, that famous appendage of yours, knuckles beaming like halogen bulbs. I remember it was large and tough, as if cut from a mountain side, and many were the foe leveled by its might. Many the loved one too, though most the time you’d only intended to caress.

I remember resting upon it at night; how I preferred that knotty lump to a pillow, though the sleep was often uneasy, as were the dreams. I used to imagine myself caught inside its grasp at night, our breaths like two sets of wings beating against the darkened wall.

But though your fist was magnificent for a time, soon it began to crumble. The skin on your knuckles split and every so often there was this faint trembling, like the shifting of plates inside the earth.

As word of your fury spread, the fights became fewer, and you made a weekly habit of cleaning the dust from between your fingers with cue tips and a bottle of Pledge. Our most intimate moment, I remember, was one morning in bed when you let me hold it in my lap and wipe the dust myself, though I admit I may have gone too far in kissing your fingertips. I still am not sorry.

The one part we could not maintain though was your nails, which, closed so tightly, could not be trimmed and cut into your palms, though I slept on it as always. And finally, I remember the day they bore so deep one must have tapped a nerve, and the shock caused your fist suddenly to fly open, whatever was kept there instantly dissolving the moment it met the sunlight, and then how I swiftly took hold.