I desperately wanted to touch people—in the most violently tender, raw, and intimate way I knew. Because in the rubble, in the tiny crystal ashtray where we lay like wasted breaths and crumpled cigarettes, with only strangers’ hands to hold and strangers’ words to seam, all I wanted, in the midst of that, was to touch.

To feel the iron-corrugated roofs of their mouths, the bumpety-bump, bumpety-bump of sorrows never whispered and apologies never heard. To feel the semi-precious, shuddering warmth of their palms, rubbed raw, spotted with red. To press, lightly, the bruises on their lips.

All I wanted was that. To feel, to feel, to feel…

I didn’t mind if their spines were coiled with wire, if all they had were collected tears, broken glass, and fractured pieces. I wanted to hold them—I needed to—just as a mother holds her baby, even when it makes her hands bleed.

©️ Beatriz Esmer