Pointer
by Tristan Szapary
“Do you know who I am?” he asked his postman.
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“Of course I do. Your aunt sends me Christmas cards.” The postman’s hands rested on top of the yellow parcel positioned squarely on his desk.
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“You cannot send a piece of yourself in the mail using our postal service. It’s quite simple,” he said.
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“Is that the law?” The man was not the type of person to say obnoxious things like ‘do you know who I am?’ in order to get his way. But he was also not particularly devoted to many of his peripheral values, dropping them if a situation proved particularly dire. There was one other customer in the post office, though they hardly counted as they spent most Saturday mornings peering at its antiquated selection of stationery and not saying much.
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“Technically, no. But right now, it’s my rule for you. It wouldn’t be good for either of you.” The postman’s spotted, hairless hands hovered above the package, as if to protect its insides from his time-worn press. The yellow paper bulged uniformly across the foot-long package. By the cries of the customer and the reservations of his postman, the package clearly contained something sensitive and dear to at least two people, the type of mail that released waves of energy only few could see upon reaching its fated doorstep.
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“She’ll understand as soon as she sees it. It’s the type of thing she’d appreciate.”
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“She has other things to worry about now. You two aren’t even supposed to be in touch.”
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“You say that like I’m the one who sent her away.” The man’s words were thick with spit, wetting the collar of his sweatshirt.
“Why be so troubled now?” the postman asked. “And how did you even get her address?”
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“I bet they’re not even that far away,” he replied triumphantly. Truthfully, the man had a supposed shipping address, quietly attained through the help of a sympathetic town member, and no concept of where that city might be. Towards the end of their relationship, in the days before she was set to leave, she would tell him in their quiet moments that maybe it would not be so bad for them. She’d say there was an allure to subway cars that rattled when they ran, a population size larger than three figures, and the possibility of take-out food. These dreams were only shared in rooms dark enough to permit such leaps of imagination, with shades pulled low to protect from glare. She knew in a town so small that the postman wielded power, such displays of optimism could be treacherous. He knew he’d never see her again after a flaccid train-track wave.
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“I don’t see how you can stop me. I’ve paid the shipping so just send it through,” the man said. He was not the type of person to throw tantrums outside the walls of his own home, and he did place a special faith in the reverence of a small town’s elders and saints. But he kept receipts for every purchase to ensure he was charged fairly, never afraid to return to a store and demand for his money back. On occasion, these traits interfered.
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“I don’t see why you’re confused. My job is to control this town’s postal services, as it has been for forty years. I will not send this package because it will do neither of you any good and that seems reasonable to me.” His eyes swept from the man to his package and back up again, searching in his customer for the key to dissuade him. The postman had watched this town grow up around him, watched it swell and shiver in size and life. He knew all that came in, he tracked all that came about, and he foresaw all that wished to come out. The postman was tasked long ago from another man––older, wiser, better at his job from a time when mail held even premium status in the processes that made life move–– to guard this town from corruption of all forms. He performed his duties with pride, and the community members had quickly learned to adore their postman for his unwavering commitment to their grounds.
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The one-room post office stood on the western face of the town’s one hill, the only semblance of elevation a traveler might find as they scavenge through the surrounding miles of shrub-colored planes. Its planks for walls and cluttered mailroom withstood the same elements and beat of time that tilled the surrounding buildings like soil, and in that way earned its place into the heart of the town’s piety. The postman stood as the embodiment of these ideals, the sentinel who gave everything he had to protect this room and the services it provided to keep the soul of his town whole. This required him to respect age-old traditions that at times brought some people pain.
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“You’re seeing someone new now, no? Forget this package. Too bad if it was a wasted gesture. Throw it away and go find her”
“Please,” the man twisted his head back as if he had just witnessed something violent. “We’re barely even dating. I need you to send this package. I’ve done things I can’t take back, things far more serious than whatever that it is.” In contrast to his sharp recollection of the one since sent to the city, the reminder of the present left only the shells of memories half-formed. He was the type of person who could easily distract himself with a good day’s work and a sweet girl’s touch. But he could not forget how things dear to him were so easily ripped away, and this dread had accumulated in him like a tar that made his chest heavy and movement slow. “I barely see her anyway,” he said in one exhale.
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“Poor girl. Her mother thinks you two are a fine match,” the postman sighed.
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“We are. I just get distracted.” He began his pleas again. “Will you please just send my package? I’ve already paid and it needs to go through.”
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“Forget my issues with who you’re sending it to. I should not let you send this package to anyone out of principle more than anything else. I was taught that the things that make you up are sacred, not meant to be packaged up and sent around like souvenirs. I’m supposed to keep this town alive and whole and I’m sorry if this hurts, but stopping you here is unfortunately a part of that. Lastly, and it’s very simple, a piece of the self should never find its way inside an envelope,” the postman said.
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“You make it sound so perverse. You know what people would say if they heard that. They don’t know what’s in there, or why she actually left.” He could not control his watering eyes.
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The other customer in the post office stood in front of the same rack of condolence cards. His eyes were closed and he had not moved in minutes, his chest swaying up and down, though he was not asleep. This pause in his weekly perusing of the post-office was customary, acting as an interlude that cut his search for cards or something else entirely into strict halves.
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“She already has a piece of me,” the man said, his voice weakening from both exhaustion and her memory. “The biggest part of me that now exists went with her when she left. And it hurts so much without them,” he tapped his chest with one finger. “They’re somewhere in a big city apartment alone, just them two. They’ll go on without me and I’ll never know what ends up of them. But maybe this will help” he said, looking at the yellow envelope. “Pieces of me, reunited and sealed. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I think she’ll understand when she sees it” The vigor trailed out of the man’s voice as he delivered those final lines. Yet the faith he showed in his own logic moved the postman, who looked upon his customer with the sympathies of a man well-acquainted with wounds this painful. Wondering what harm an exception to his authority could truly cause, the postman sped through a calculation as the man cried in front of him.
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“It will only hurt you more, you know,” the postman said.
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“I think that’s the point,” the man replied, his shoulders pulled low.
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“Fine. I’ll send it off. It’ll arrive in four business days, no more.” The postman’s expert hands descended upon the package as if it were prey and in seconds its yellow paper flashed through the air and vanished somewhere behind him. The swiftness and skill of the motion, like sleight of hand, struck the man as incommensurate with the struggles it took to reach this point.
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“Can I help you with anything else today?” the postman asked with the chastity he tried and frequently failed to adopt with all who sought his services.
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The man hesitated, looking behind the postman into the overflowing bins and cluttered shelves in which a piece of himself would reside for the night. Now that he knew the package would inevitably reach her mailbox, a sudden sobriety came upon him. The man saw with a clear mind for the first time in days that carved-out part of him, the empty hole where a piece of his core once laid.
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The man did not regret sending it, not after the lengths he went to in order to see it through, nor was he the type of person to fight for anything unless he believed it was good and true. Yet he needed more time than most to recover from these battles once fought, for these droughts of strength lingered well past when friends and family had expected him to heal. In truth, he was still tired and still lonely and now severely crippled.
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“Maybe you could help with the door?” he asked his postman.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked her doorman. The lobby’s white floors gleamed with wax, reflecting the lights that floated overhead.
The brass piping that lined most corners in the space was speckled with grime. Another tenant of the building, a girl who the woman had passed once while entering a nail salon ten blocks north but never in their own building until now, sat on the couch opposite of the front desk. This seated girl scribbled in a brown book that was a quarter of the size of her pocketbook, too anxious about when her guest would arrive to be concerned with the contents of her journal.
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“Of course I do, ma’am,” the doorman replied. “I’ve done my homework. How else would I have gotten this job?” His dimples collected in the two corners of his face as he flashed the smile that no doubt also contributed to his hiring.
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It was the woman’s eighth month in the apartment when the old doorman had stepped down from his post. Though her overlap with him had been limited, she had grown fond of him in the same way school children learn to appreciate their bus drivers. In her mind, only because everything in a city this large felt prehistoric, the old doorman was as essential to the building’s foundation as the cement pillars that kept it upright. He was a feature of these lands rather than a man who had earned his retirement years ago, and in that first week without him, his departure had weighed on her heart each time she traversed the lobby. She was the type of person who tended to conflate most encounters with those paid to serve her with a romanticism that did not exist. However, she never allowed memories of such intimacies dwell in her mind too long. She, too, understood that these interactions were rarely anything deeper than courtesy.
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“I’m flattered, and not to offend you, but a bit surprised. Didn’t you only start a few days ago?” The woman placed her two paper bags in between her feet, her stockings hugging either end of the cold groceries, so that she could face the front desk head on. “You’re clearly skilled at your craft.”
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“Gotta be!” the doorman said too cheerfully. “Hate to bother you ma’am, but I called you over because I’m sort of in a tough situation. There’s this package that’s arrived for you, just came in actually.” He kept his eyes locked on the woman as one hand carefully arose from beneath his desk holding a yellow parcel. “But unfortunately, I’m not supposed to give it to you ma’am.”
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The seated girl on the couch behind them, still coloring in the corner of her journal, glanced outside for any sign of her visitor. The standing woman tilted her head, her short bangs falling across her forehead. “How’s that so?”
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“I’m sorry ma’am, I’m just trying to do the right thing. Trust me, this is not an easy decision for me, especially being new around here and all,” he said with his shoulders pinched back. “I was instructed to not let this reach your hands.”
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“Peculiar,” the woman said. She looked at the parcel now placed on the desk. The doorman’s two hands clamped down on the package like a vice as if he feared she would make a grab for it. “That package seems important though. I can tell it’s from someone I was once very close to.”
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“They told me who it was from.”
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“Who’s they?” She squeezed the paper bags with her legs as her defenses began to rise.
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“The postman from your former town left a note. Explaining everything.” The doorman would not meet her eyes.
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The woman touched the side of her cheek with one finger, the nail’s red polish shining against the waxed floor on its way up. “I see. So you’re all up to date.” The woman was unperturbed, only because she knew a move like this was inevitable. She never expected to escape the place from where she came, nor did she necessarily even want to. The only fact she dreaded was that her relationship with this new doorman was now tainted by the knowledge of his conflicting, superior allegiances.
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“If you were never going to give me my own mail in the first place, why bother showing me?” she asked. “Surely now you’re afraid of getting in trouble. That I might report you? I would hate to do that to you.” They both knew such threats were limp. She was not the type to waste words saying things she didn’t mean. But if tired enough, or when under attack, she might resort to careless language as a form of misdirection.
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“Good question, and truly, I understand your confusion.” He nodded as he spoke. “To be honest, I probably should have kept it to myself, but that just doesn’t feel right. I like the job but I’m not that kinda guy. What doorman would I be, hiding your mail?” He broke his gaze from the woman whose eyes had him pinned, looking down at the package he held tight. “I’m just following orders. I’m just like everyone else, you know? I want the best for you two.”
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She grunted. “What’s in the package?” Her voice grew sharper at each mention of her former lover.
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“Well, ma’am. He sent you a piece of himself, in the mail.” He quickly removed his two hands from the yellow parcel, as if just now remembering its contents and fearing they might now be marked.
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“Oh,” the woman frowned, confused by all the former fuss. “Sounds quite like him.”
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“Hm,” the doorman agreed, relieved that they had common ground once more.
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“Which piece might that be? Many forms of the self can find their way into the mail.”
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“They don’t tell me that sort of thing, I’m just the doorman. And you should know I’m not trying to tell you how to live, or anything like that. Again, I’m just doing my job.” The doorman nervously drummed on his wooden desk with his thin knuckles. He had expected more resistance, and maybe even the request that he report to his superiors, and instead was met with the woman’s patient drill that he found more unsettling.
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“Truly peculiar,” the woman said. Only because she knew the package would end up many stories above, opened in the privacy of her apartment, did she continue this detached attitude. She was the type of person who could immediately discern whether any individual before her would eventually submit to her will, and often capitalized on this trait to survive.
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On the stiff couch behind them, the girl with the pen and scribbling book had begun writing legible text. The standing woman briefly considered the girl’s case, worried that the man this young journaler was waiting for never had any intention of arriving. This was not a feeling the woman had ever had to know. Her lover had always been good to her, as good as a man like that could be, and never late to their appointments. But they lived in so small a town that there was not much one could be late for. There were moments in this new terrain of tall, swaying buildings and subways tunnels that shook her feet that she missed this former proximity to the people and places that had raised her. In the heights of this city that stretched higher and lower than she could ever have imagined, she at times longed for the plains that had rolled out around her like a carpet. Such flatness hardly made any deviations at all, like the singular hill that faced the west, that had been subjected to the sort of reverence that she had now learned was normally reserved for gods who reigned over much grander heights.
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Yet it was facts like these that turned such moments of nostalgia into merely that, rather than tears and pleas to return home. She learned out here that the hive of her town had a stunted imagination, if only because creation of any kind separate from flat houses and the miles of plains that bordered them had no kindle from which to spark. Of course, she had been no different from the rest. In those days, the woman was just as ignorant to the world separate from their own expanse, and even now, she knew quite little. All the town members knew a greater society existed around them –– that was not ever kept from them––but what remained missing was the motivation or even the curiosity to trespass anywhere beyond their proper community. So it had shocked her when she had arisen in the morning while he still slept in peace beside her and found the letter slipped under their door announcing her selection. To this day, the woman still did not know why or how the delivery of such wrenching news could follow the sacred scene shared by the lovers the night before. The two had spent those late hours fused under the weight of covers and the bedroom’s pitch black, picking each other apart and, together, creating something final.
Maybe they could sense the letter’s arrival a few hours early because like never before they held each other, clutching so tightly that the space between their skin gasped for air. When they were collectively finished, they both closed their eyes to catch a moment’s rest, knowing their union had left a weight the woman could carry along in her venture far away. Then her eyes had shot open, lifting her out of their bed and sending her straight to the front door where she found the thin envelope. The woman had only ever heard of the custom from neighbors much older than her and half as lucid, so when she saw its crisp parchment with the town’s purple seal neatly stamped in one corner, her purpose struck her like a nauseating wave.
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She instantly knew such a purpose would invert her world with respect to the town and with respect to him. But the forces involved in maintaining their town’s dignity were trusted for their prudence, and not subject to questioning either way. Moreover, she had been raised in the type of household that taught as dogma that one should never concern themselves with the uncontrollables. Thus, the woman assumed her role bravely, without complaint, and maybe that was why she had been selected in the first place. He sobbed in her arms as she patted down the cowlicks in his hair. She found peace knowing two individuals who had known each other this well could run their lives parallel to each other’s, albeit apart, and that in itself would keep them acquainted. As a tribute of her town and the ideals it sought to uphold, she would carry on alone.
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“Packages like these should be delivered with no delay.” She kept her eyes on the doorman’s hands, which still fluttered like small insects.
“But what’s the point if you can’t see him anymore,” the doorman replied. “You have moved on, no? To better men?”
“My other men are none of your concern. That package you’re holding has artifacts of a past that are very important to me. A past I’m still quite devoted to.”
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She would not deny it. The woman still loved him in the same way she still loved home. This new city churned around her, rising so high and so far around her that she felt perpetually lost, and the men she had come to know were still strangers. Months ago, she had arrived to this labyrinth heavier than ever, with sore feet, two suitcases filled with four seasons worth of clothes, and no sense of where to go. Once past the borders of her town and into this new realm where they had directed her, she was left to scramble, for her duty had been completed. Her sacrifice allowed the town to continue forward in their sanctitude, but there was no consideration for what would eventually become of her. The woman understood these as her terms and still made do on her own. Nonetheless, she missed him. The woman had only learned in their time spent apart that once certain thresholds of shared time and intimacy were passed between two individuals, an emotional logic formed between those parties that no one else could hope to rationalize. She knew the doorman had been well informed but she could not expect him to understand such deeper elements of her story.
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Meanwhile, the girl seated on the couch behind them had grown tired from writing and waiting. She let her hands fall on her lap, her journal placed by her side, and her eyes remained half shut. She was not asleep but merely resting, as rejection took its honest toll.
“You will hand me the package, and after this you and I will become good friends.” The woman reached between her legs and slipped her hand through the straps of her paper bags, whose chill persisted. She had decided that there were better ways to spend her time than resist the inevitable, and that if a lover had really sent a piece of himself to her in the mail, then no one could stop her from accepting it. “But I won’t forget about this incident. This was important in establishing our relationship.”
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“What if it hurts you?” The doorman squirmed under her forceful words that left no room for compromise.
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“You’re silly. How could I hurt any more?” She picked up the package with her free hand and walked to the elevator, glancing at the resting girl whose eyelids remained shut. The woman called the elevator with her elbow and turned back to her new doorman. “I am looking forward to what comes of us two.”
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“Yes ma’am,” he said. The doorman just then noticed the sweat that pasted his undershirt to his chest. He was young and inexperienced but had already shown the qualities of a great keeper of these gates. Perhaps the postman understood, for he knew most things, that this young man would ultimately be no match for the woman’s force. Perhaps he merely wanted to see how long the doorman could stall her. No matter the motives of his higher ups, the doorman’s stomach knotted itself in shame of his spineless performance.
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The elevator soared many stories, carrying the woman and her cargo up to the sixteenth floor. The doors dinged and slid open, and she stepped out into the hallway, briefly glancing in the rectangular mirror that reflected her tall frame. She stopped halfway down the hallway and slipped her keys through the lock, silently pushing the door open. The woman’s apartment was mostly featureless, consisting of the forms and structures that made up the livable minimum for the standards of a giant city. A single futon sat in the corner of the apartment’s one living room, opposite of a shelf that was a foot taller and twice as wide as the woman. Not a single book or ornament sat within its shelves. The woman liked to believe the bareness of the space was a partial homage to those lands which had produced her. She had deliberately stripped the walls of the unimpressive prints that came with the rented space and stored them in the back of the only bedroom’s only closet.
The woman peeked into her room to ensure its peace remained, then placed the grocery bags and package on the portion of the countertop in between the oven and the sink. She picked up the bulging envelope and ran her hand against the inked address written in a familiar thick cursive she had seen sprawled across many letters of the past. With shallow breaths, she turned the package on its side and tore its edge off in one tug. The two ends of the parcel peeled open, like skin unstitched, and a sweet smell trailed from its interior. Without peering inside, she knew what piece of himself he had sent her and chuckled. Letting the contents slide out of its womb, the woman saw the pink skin taut against the bone on which it was now preserved. Frozen in a state of perpetual strain, the man’s left hand reached out as if searching for more space to grab, pointing up at the single bulb that lit the kitchenette.
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She examined the object, pale against the darkened countertop beneath it, and felt soothed. Like gasoline, its pickled smell burned her nostrils in a way she knew she should not have enjoyed so much. She was more tired than she allowed herself to admit, fearing that to acknowledge such an empty tank would recursively expend its final fumes. That to stop would mean bending the knee, failing this new mission to fend for herself in this alien world.
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The piece of his self that he had sent, though certainly a desperate act, momentarily lightened her load. If only to show that they could still be in touch, he had reached out to bridge the gap between him and them. She could see how much he hurt, how hard it was to stay put while a new, forming piece of himself had been sent off to grow without him. The woman picked the hand up, ignoring its chilled touch which in times past had warmed her and more than satisfied her needs to be felt, and brought it to the bedroom.
The lights were off and the pulled shades let in only slits of dimming rays that grazed the room’s objects but did not illuminate them. She walked past her own bed, into the corner of the room where from a stony sleep he stirred in his cradle.
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“Hello little one,” she whispered, stroking his head with a soft caress. Their baby blinked one of his eyes open, just enough to register the outlines of shapes and the haze of colors, and he reached out for the form that in turn reached for him. His five tiny fingers wrapped around the pointer finger which sprawled out from his father’s hand that his mother now held. This act of touch infused the object’s cold skin with the boundless heat generated by an infant’s endless nap. In that instant, the woman absorbed the energy released when pieces of the self reunited. For a second, she saw the man whom she had once been allowed near, saw his image before her as he started anew, beginning again but now with pieces which would include part of her. She would not let this sentimental display slow her down. But she was the type of person who could pause her march to appreciate love in the few true moments it confronted her. It was generally these types of people who succeeded in exile.