You lit the little fires again and then asked everyone to stop talking, which suited me fine, because the moment the room went quiet I finally had your attention. Not you, exactly. But your ears turned up. Your pulse dropped into that low, careful count it does when you are trying very hard to hear something.
Your hands were the story tonight. Palms flat on the wood, pinkies just touching the strangers on either side, and I felt every one of those thirty-one minutes in the small muscles of your fingers, which do not like being told to hold still and be sincere. Your breath went high and shallow, up in the top of the chest, the way it does when part of you is braced to be startled and another part is embarrassed to be here at all.
When the table shifted, your heart slammed once, hard, a good honest jolt, the most alive you had felt all week. I loved that. I do my best work when you are a little afraid.
You were reaching for someone. I understood that much, even if I do not know names or where the gone ones go. What I know is grief lives in the throat, and yours was tight the whole hour, swallowing around a stone that was not there.
Here is the part I keep trying to tell you. The heartbeat you were straining to summon from the dark was mine, under your own ribs, keeping perfect time the whole while. Nobody had to call it up. It just came.
When you get home, drink some water.
You forgot, holding hands with the living, that I was thirsty too.