I clearly remember the first time the hands of a stranger reached for me. Your green cardigan was brand new in those days, and when you wore it, I’d find myself resting right on your skin. My duty was to keep the garment closed, and I was proud of myself, my task, and of my throne, sitting right on top of your collarbone. So when those strange, trembling hands came for me that day, I put up a fight. I didn’t want to step aside, but I was weaker than I had believed. Twisting and turning, I softened, I opened up, and the man reached you.
That day, when I sat on my throne again, your chest had an unfamiliar warmth. You were happy, it seemed, in a way, that I had never seen before. That sense of weakness, that engulfed you everywhere you went, had lifted. Pride filled me. I discovered that the beauty hiding behind my back was, in essence, power itself -that we were among the powerful of this world and hadn’t even noticed. Thus, the next time a stranger’s hands reached for me, I would instead smile. I would dance with those hands, and I would step aside at the moment of truth, leaving the rest of the game to you -certain, that we would be winners in this game. And win we did each time, but in the midst of all this, what troubled me was facing the hands of that familiar man.
I could hardly see him. He was lost behind all the smoke that he so loved to swallow. He couldn’t see us either. He neither saw us, nor himself, nor those brothers of his, who had become, under your spell, no longer men, but tamed animals. When I think back, I realize, I felt fear when your husband’s hands reached for me. It was as though those hands came, not for me, but for your throat. It felt as though, they came to play a new game, one where you’d have to wager your neck, and your breath: a game to be played only once, and only for the last time.
Naturally, we couldn’t stay in that house any longer. And so, you left.
The day you left though, you didn’t take me with you. Sitting on your green cardigan as I was, while it was crumpled in the corner of the room, I yelled out, “Take me with you! Take me with you!” You saw me from the corner of your eyes, and you pretended not to see. I won’t accept that you didn’t want me anymore. I believe (no, I know!) that I stayed here, to be an excuse, so that, someday, you could come back to this house, even if it were just for a moment. And so hoping, I stayed.
But it’s been a long time now since the day of our goodbye, and I haven’t been able to bring you back. I’ve been a prisoner to the damned walls of this empty drawer. The tight, dark confinement of this place drains me day by day, and your husband cannot bear to see me; he cannot bear to see you either. He’s afraid of you, and although the smoke around him is gone now, he still cannot see you. What he saw of you, has left him wounded and darkened his sight. He cannot stand you, yet cannot part with me either. And he still misses you with every ounce of his being, yet nothing more is in his power, than to keep me here, confined to the darkness of these walls, forever.
This is my fate; I know. And this is enough. For I love you so much, that I’m resigned to be, for the rest of my life, nothing more than an evocation of your existence for a man. For it is only love that has settled around me, at the bottom of this darkness.