These Hands

“Caroline is watchful and sincere, shy yet earnest. She seldom speaks, and when she does her lips scarcely part, so that sometimes Lewis must listen closely to distinguish her voice from the cycling of her breath. Her eyes are a miracle – a startled blue with frail green spikes bound by a ring of black – and he is certain that if he could draw his reflection from them, he would discover there a face neither foreign nor lost. Caroline sleeps face down, her knees curled to her chest: she sleeps often and with no sheets or blankets. Her hair is brown, her skin pale. Her smile is vibrant but brief, like a bubble that lasts only as long as the air is still. She is eighteen months old.”

Kevin Brockmeier draws the listener in with poetic prose that paints a picture of beauty and purity, and becomes a part of a love story that tests the boundaries of morality without ever quite crossing them. Lewis Winters, a thirty-four year-old writer of fairy tales, recounts his short-lived relationship with Caroline Mitchell, and the anguish of having to let go without getting to say good-bye.