Flash
Hugh Cartwright

Photo Credit: Suzanne Cadwell/Flickr (CC-by-nc)

I love your lips, but they do not tell me how you feel. Just a touch of your hand, or your smile from across the room, and I can see into your heart.

Evening. The sunlight is golden as we settle for dinner.

“I wonder…” You begin, then pause.

I smile as you tuck back a lock of greying hair and continue.

“…after all, it’s been a while.”

There’s no need to ask what is on your mind. “Not for a few weeks,” I say. “They are away at the cabin with the kids.”

The conversation, barely begun, lapses into agreeable silence.

I gaze past the cedars into the gathering dusk. Gold becomes yellow and purple. “You know, my love, it feels like…”

She interrupts and nods gently. “Yes, you are right. I can feel snow in the air too. We’ll be digging by tomorrow evening.”

But that night, as the snow carpets the trees, a virus will follow. Within weeks it will destroy my hearing forever.

I stare at your lips now and wonder what they say. After forty years of marriage our need for words has washed away. And yet now I ache for words: for the feel and touch of your voice, a gentle caress that will never reach me again.

Formerly a University scientist, Hugh is now retired and living in the Pacific Northwest, where writing provides a diversion from his doomed attempts to grow Canadian oranges. His stories have appeared in Nature Futures, Foxglove Journal, Meniscus, The Drabble, and elsewhere. Email: hscart[at]telus.net