It is what you don’t see that is most dangerous
Native to this beautiful desert I live in is the prickly pear cactus. There is a large one in my front yard separating the neighbor’s driveway from my own. If you look at a prickly pear, you will see large spines sticking out menacingly from the pores of the pad, and it seems a simple enough thing to avoid them. But what you don’t see is that at the base of those large and dangerous-looking spikes is a bed of tiny, hairlike spines that are invisible from anything but close range, and for those unacquainted with this desert plant, maybe not even then.
More often than not, these are the ones that will get you, because you need only brush them to end up with a hand full of them. Or something else; I’ve seen them sticking out of my leather tennis shoes and a green plastic garden hose I misguidedly pulled past one.
They are nearly impossible to see, and often you don’t know that they are there until you touch your hand to something just so and are rewarded with a zinging pain. The filaments of these spines are like fiberglass; they work their way into and under your skin and stay there, impervious to all attempts at removal. If you can see them sticking out, you can try a tweezers, but the spines are brittle and are as likely to break as be removed. You can try letting white glue dry on the unfortunate hand, and sometimes you can peel them off with the glue. Sometimes slowly rubbing across the spines with duct tape will pull them out, but only if you’re going the right direction; if not, you can end up helping them deeper into your skin.
Sometimes you’re just stuck with them, and you have to put up with them until they work themselves out via the normal shedding of your skin. Half the time, they won’t hurt at all. Usually, you have to hit them just right, and then it’s a doozy. And you want to just be rid of them as soon as possible, but the spines will take their own time leaving your flesh.
I’m not sure why, today, the prickly pear suggested itself to me. But last night, in the dark, after I’d put away the book I’ve been distracting myself with, I was flooded with memories of A. I do not often think of the trauma of those days after he died and before I knew it. There is no need; it was a horrible time, and he had already gone. Anyway, it is the sweetest memories that make me cry now.
That first kiss in the airport, brief and tentative, like I was kissing a relative. And the second one, the real thing, that put jelly in my knees that returns even with the memory of that kiss and all those we shared thereafter. The memory of the way his hands moved on his guitar, like liquid, like he had no bones. The memory of the way his hands moved on me, like fire, like I had no bones. The memories came one after another; I have no trouble remembering the good times. Those are the ones that make me weep the most. Those are the ones that had the tears rolling down my face into the pillow I hugged tightly as I remembered holding him. I cry because it was so good to be "us," together. I cry because memories are all I have now.
I don’t know why those memories came last night, so clear and palpable, so dangerous. Most of the time, they don’t hurt at all. But you hit it just right, and it’s a doozy.