The point of touching

One night, long after the children and I had fallen asleep, my wife lit candles in every room of our house, took off her clothes, and went outside, naked, to sketch charcoal impressions of the candle-glowing house full of sleepers and light she loved. And then she took a scissors and cut a lock of hair from each of us--me, our children, herself--and buried our hair at the drip line of our gumbo-limbo tree. She played her cello then, in our candle-lit living room, until dawn yawned at the windows, and then she blew out the candles, came to bed, and slept like a leaf flowing down stream, and slept like words in some forgotten language. When she woke, at noon, there was no one home to talk to, so she never told us anything--except in the way she touched me anywhere that evening, the way she kisses me some nights: with a yearning that makes me stop growing older for a few moments, reverses the direction of my blood, yes, and makes me glow. And that's the point of touching, isn't it? To make our bodies real? And things like that are sometimes closer than the world, closer than our words, closer even than ourselves. So other nights I stay up beyond anyone, pacing the sidewalk like the good husband I am, back and forth, back and forth--until I finally wear away and vanish, like light itself, like life, or like fragrance from the drowsy flowers growing taller and hairy around our gumbo-limbo tree.