THINGS CHANGED
gavin lambert
My wife and I have changed. We used to sit together. We used to hold each other. We used to hold hands. We used to say purposeless things to each other, things that weren’t about what to do next, or what not to do next, or what we should have done. I’m now in this room and she’s somewhere else and we haven’t even held hands in a very long time. Do people hold hands anymore? I remember holding hands.
Lucille. Lucille held my hand. We were eight years old, I think. Lucille had always very firmly called me Henry, and she just as firmly held my hand. We had crushes and everyone knew it. I told her a joke that I had heard my dad tell. I don’t exactly remember the joke but it had something to do with bears, panda’s. Eats, shoots, and leaves. She laughed. We were sitting on a bench during recess and she laughed and grabbed my hand and decisively held it and it made me feel crazy. It was erotic. Eight-year-old love-making. I had wanted to grunt or jump, but I just sat there holding on.
Things change.
Gavin Lambert is thirty-three-years-old and lives in North Florida with his wife and daughter. His fiction has appeared most recently in Storyglossia, Word Riot, Segue, Thieves Jargon, and The Externalist.