What am I to do with these frozen arms? I can’t even raise my hands to mark my fright. But then, one must get on with it, the day moves forward anyhow. And isn’t it nice to know for a change that all the heavy lifting, all the grasping and reaching, will fall to someone else? There are minor setbacks to be sure, but here I bow to my coffee and sip as from a holy untouchable grail. When the level drops too low I have a strong mouth, I realize, and boost the mug high between my teeth and parade around the house tilted and slurping. It’s almost as if I never knew myself with arms. How they got in the way! Made a hash of such things as shirts and jackets, bungling any chance at comfortable sleep. Now can you imagine a world free of sleeves? A world where to greet one another we press ourselves heart to heart?
It’s fair to say this grand morning puts me in an evolutionary frame of mind. I think of the first snake to leave its lizard past behind. What a thrill to finally own a life where to steal away requires no more than a belly.
But wait! The day has yet to begin. I know this because I am standing in my nightclothes still, arms glued to my sides, a lone ray of sun caught like a poor animal in the gold knob of the bedroom door.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew R. Touhy, a recipient of the San Francisco Browning Society’s Dramatic Monologue Award and Fourteen Hills’ Bambi Holmes Fiction Prize, is also a nominee for inclusion in Best New American Voices. His work appears in Alaska Quarterly Review, New England Review, Conjunctions, New American Writing, The Collagist, New Orleans Review, Colorado Review, Eleven Eleven, and other literary journals. He teaches fiction at the Writing Salon and flash fiction workshops in Birdland, and lives in Oakland with his wife and child.