Gesture

When your fingers brushed hers in a gesture repeated over a lifetime,
They were firing the bolts in a hundred crossbows
That buried deep down into my chest to pierce my heart and my gut.
My smile stayed pasted to my face, while my mind whispered: nobody knows.

When your arm nudged hers in a gesture of long-repeated in-jokes,
My breath caught, my eyes stung, and I clung to a fire exit
In an attempt to avoid the rising, billowing smoke
That formed a mist effigy of you. I flailed. I slipped.

When y...