Glove story

It's February, cold and dark, and Glove sits a the cafe with the windows steaming over. It sips a latté and thumbs through a book. Ignoring a funny twist in its center, Glove focuses just on what's before it. "Remember, Glove, you are empty in this moment. There is nothing to worry about." Atop the latte sits a tiny storm of white foam and brown thickness. It leaves a bubbly mustache on Glove's upper lip at each sip.

Hand bounds through the door and grabs up Glove in affectionate reunion. It orders a similar blizzard-topped drink. Hand boasts about what has been happening in its life. Glove listens. Glove shares its pointerless meanderings. Hand guffaws, chuckles and interprets with shock Glove's singing, gardening and yoga escapades. Hand has been exploring the planet and shares shiny stories of Cairo, Iceland, Sydney, London. Glove has been exploring people and pockets and its stories are less glamorous, perhaps more rumply about the edges and softer in their reasoning. But they are both no less happy.

Hand questions Glove. Why it was no where to be found the last time Hand sought it out? Hand looked everywhere! But hands do not need gloves in all seasons and find other things to toy with. And gloves, once carelessly dropped, don't wait quietly in drawers, pockets or closets. Gloves can be picked up by anyone and find other things to keep warm. And so it happened that the last time Hand looked for Glove it was keeping something else warm.

Hand, being a hand, must fiddle with Glove's various extremities; tugging at a finger here and a thumb here. Glove, being a glover, can't help but wrap up the affection.

At some point they've caught up and chuckled over all that a hand and a glove can. The latte mugs are empty of liquid and filled only with tidal rings left by receding foam. A muffled silence fills the air.

Then, Hand grabs Glove; shoving it into a pocket. Now, Hand can warm some place that it did not realize had grown cold. And for a knit in the frigid fabric of eternity they are Hand and Glove.

But hands do not live in gloves and eventually Hand must go do hand things and Glove quietly puts itself away in a drawer. Glove convinces itself that, for a short bit at least, it likes the drawer. It's cozy and glove can snuggle its fading warmth inside.

Hands are meant to keep reaching out and grabbing things. There is no fault to being a hand. Sometimes Glove wishes it were more like a hand. A glove can get lost from it's hand and find itself warming any foreigner who finds it. A glove can't help it. And when you're a glover the world is only your mirror and shows you what you are by being the thing that you are not. The world is full of hands always telling gloves that they are empty and nothing without them.

Glove picks itself up out of the drawer and drags itself into the bathroom. It looks into the mirror and remarks with only a little surprise the over stretched and sagging body it sees in there.

Hand had come by with that well groomed charm and clean manners and didn't Glove just find itself wrapping that up. Again. Glove thought it loved Hand. It liked the way being around Hand provided a warmth and direction. But too soon Glove realized that it had once again been put away. The horrible boiling that rose from the pit of the stomach, broke a sweat on the back and moistened its eyes was the realization that Glove had deceived itself once again. Hands are simply not born to live in gloves.

"Stupid Glove!" It mutters at itself, still rumpled and still covered with Hand's fingerprints. It had just loved being picked up, touched and adored for a change. But hands do hand things and gloves are discarded with only their memories of warmth and shape as comfort.

"Stupid Glove!" It shouts to the reflection. "How could you have been so stupid! How could you have dared to hope again? You know you sat there and probably said all of the wrong things! You know your jokes are corney! YOU KNOW DAMNED WELL that no Hand ever comes back!"

And in the mirror Glove saw, finally, just how selfish it had been, expecting to be filled up. Hand always let Glove imagine life could be different. With Hand, Glove had a taste of a life that it never felt on its own. Glove wished it had been born a hand, not a glove. That way it could have bones to hold itself up and muscles with which to grab what it wanted.

Just then Glove wondered with every fiber of being if it was really meant to be a glove at all? It had built these seams, knotted them off and divided itself into all these fingers and then hoped that someday just the right hand to fit these contortions would come along. Glove had merely succeeded in twisting itself up into all sorts of weird shapes and spent a lot of effort on making it all look natural.

So Glove, a bit reluctantly at first, gave up on ever fitting over another perfect hand. With a tug here and a letting go there it started to come apart at the seams. Stitches that had been years in the making found themselves being easily torn open. And one day it discovered happily that what had always been inside of it was not empty at all. It had been blocked out by hopes for hands, but it was still there. Only now, it was free.