Hands

She’s left a magazine open for me next to my toast and coffee. It says that they were wrong, that the oldest human skeleton wasn’t, that they have found one older and everything is different. Finishing my mug I feel my hands shaking, even though the coffee is no colder than usual, and the toast isn’t either, it’s nearly warm.

When we met Julie couldn’t cook any better than I could. There was a contempt we had for corporal pleasures, not just eating but alcohol and smoking too. Even dancing and swimming; all those lower ecstasies. Our worst enemy was sleep, always threatening to keep us from each other, but most nights we’d win, giddy on ideas.

And after we finished school we felt a vindication, our peers tumbling elseways, lost and worn, while Julie and I were so close to something big, a new aesthetic that was ours. My grant bought a studio space and before I left each morning she’d make me toast and a coffee, timed to both be hot, even though I knew the coffee took longer.

I haven’t had anywhere to go early in awhile. Now it’s Julie who must get up, shower and put on that outfit that used to be funny but hasn’t been lately. And we don’t talk so much now, but exchange notes and papers. I dreamt that today I’d find one signed “Management,” but there’s no evidence of any human hand; the article doesn’t even name a reporter.

It says that humans didn’t rise from four limbs onto two to conserve energy like they’d thought, the hypothesis that said we needed more oxygen for our brains, but that we needed free hands to bring goods to mates. A scientist calls this “monogamy” under a bold line that says “Food for Sex,” and I’m rinsing my cup where Julie must have stood, after making coffee, before toasting bread.