The Weight of Other Hands

The salt spray tastes metallic on my tongue. We stand on the asphalt, the green enamel cup of a coffee shop sits abandoned on the curb. Dawn is a deep bruise over the Pacific, and the air smells of wet seaweed and diesel. My fingers trace the blue ink on the envelope; the loops and descenders are mine, written with the fountain pen I kept in the desk drawer last fall. I do not know who wrote this, only that the looping pressure of the 'A' is my own. A cold certainty settles in the chest, a pocket of ache with no discernible shape. I turn my palm up. The hand resting on my elbow carries the weight of another person. It is heavier, denser, a specific, undeniable gravitational pull that makes my wrist ache. It holds the measure of a man who used to take me to the beach in 1997. He does not turn his head. The fog rolls in, swallowing the single blinking light on the pier.