Sunset Hands

The three of us have never held hands. I wonder what your hands might feel like. My sweet selfish father, may God keep you. Since, I can no longer. And you mother, with your dark thick hair, and perfectly false smile. Leaving it all for me to imagine, and I often do when I hold my son's hands, or while I clip his nails, and show him piano chords in the key of C or a minor. I'm teaching him how to use his hands. When to keep them to himself. How to offer them up to others. Sometimes, while walking with him. I gently squeeze his hand once a minute. For every 59 beats of this crippled heart. What you two have left of it. I make certain there's eye contact with my squeezing. Because, he always makes sure to smile & shine those cobalt-baby-blues right back at me with that inevitable child simplified observation of the spaces between them and whatever comes into their minds. "What's that daddy?" He chimes, pointing. "That's our star, our sun little man". I offer back, gazing West. "What is it doing way over there?". He stops to tie his shoe, but I finish the knot for him & straighten up his tongue & then thee other, before tugging up his socks, fixing his collar & wiping the sleep out of his eyes. He is trying to be serious and mature, mirroring me. Three year old's are brave enough to attempt anything possible. Imitate anything they wish, or anyone. So I think about my responses these days very carefully. "It's keeping us warm, breathing, and letting us see.". "See what, daddy?". He asks, urgent & more curious still. But fear & my past set in faster than an asthma attack on a smog levels warning day out in the valley. I feel my chest screw up so tight I have to either sigh, or pop, and wipe my wild eyes dry. Pull myself back together. But instead, my eyes break the levee wide as I just tremble. Weeping quietly, so as not to frighten him, or myself anymore than necessary. "To see each other son, in case we forget" I try to smile, and it half does. "Forget what?" He states with his new clear eyes. "What, and who we are, when we know that we're loved". I whisper, not just to him, but for the two of you also; Or perhaps, to a God ripped out of me long ago. By hands given to me, by the selfishness of strangers & parents that can clap for a show, but not dial a phone. "I know who I am daddy" He says with a skip. "I'm your son, and you're my dad, and that's our sun" He states. Then he squeezes my hand as day shifts to night.