Humanity through hangnails.
Someone held my hand on the train this morning.
My first impulse was to pull away, feelings of indignation and resentment curdling up in my empty stomach. (He was taller than me and had the whole upper pole to hold on to—why did he need to overlap his hand on mine, let alone touch me at all?!)
But then I paused and let his warmth seep into my blood. Felt the comfort of human skin. Let his knuckles exfoliate my hardened opinions of contact with strangers. Did he even notice his fingers were laced over mine? Perhaps my hands, chilled from the autumn air, made for a better pole than person, and my frigid skin blended right in with the lifeless steel. Or maybe he just liked the feel, too.
As the stops went by and neither of our hands moved, despite the crowded train clearing bit by bit, forcing us to twist and turn our bodies like strings of kelp anchored in a swirling current of people, anxiety began to crystalize in my cool fingertips. I suddenly didn’t want his hand to leave mine. I didn’t want his stop to come. There was something so poignantly moving about two strangers touching hands like that—with nothing more, nothing less. Ions being exchanged without catalyst. An intimacy of innocence. Veins pressing against vulnerabilities. Humanity through hangnails.
My stop came first. I stepped off, and reached for my hand sanitizer. I never saw his face.
