They have come to the round table with their fingertips barely touching, palms warm, and they are asking for me. Candle between them, its little heat leaning one way then the other with their breath. They think the cold spot by the window is a sign. It is only the draft I used to complain about, the one I meant to fix every autumn and never did.
Look at your hands, I want to tell them. Look how they rest on the wood, how the fingers of the woman on the left keep drifting to touch the man beside her, just the side of his knuckle, checking he is still there. You have each other under a warm ceiling and you are spending it calling into the dark for someone who would give anything to be the one passing the salt.
They ask me to move the glass. I cannot. I could not move it when I had arms, half the time; it slipped, it left a ring on the good table, and they laughed at me, and that laughing is the loudest thing in this room now and none of them can hear it.
The candle gutters. They gasp, delighted, terrified, alive. Oh, be alive. Stay a long time in your dull warm bodies. Burn your tongues on the tea, misplace your keys, sit through the boring parts.
I am not in the flame. I am in the draft you keep forgetting to fix. Leave it. Let it in a little longer.
Then go to bed while you can still feel the sheets.