<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a feeling I\u2019m not quite sure that I can explain: the one I get when you gently take my hand in yours. People say your heart thumps in your chest when the person you love glances your way, listens carefully when you speak, touches you in simple ways. But, I\u2019m not sure I agree.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When your hand takes mine, I think my heart calms for the first time in my life. My muscles relax as you wrap your fingers around to touch mine. My eyes get heavy and my body floats on the feeling, drifting to another kind of happiness. I swear, for just that one moment, that you love me more than I\u2019ll ever know.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And when your hand leaves mine, I think I\u2019m drowning. The water sucks into my lungs as the wave of disappointment runs over my skin and down into my bones. I try desperately to pull myself up, but I find I can\u2019t think of a reason to live. I\u2019m dying, because if there\u2019s a world where your hand doesn\u2019t take mine mindlessly and delicately, then maybe I don\u2019t want to live in it. A small, tense corpse washes onto the sand under gray skies. I die in the black wave of my own dying expectations.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s a feeling I\u2019m sure that I can explain: the one where you know they\u2019ll never be yours when their hand leaves yours. People say you can get over a small gesture like that, but I\u2019m not sure I agree.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Megan Van Autreve There\u2019s a feeling I\u2019m not quite sure that I can explain: the one I get when you gently take my hand in yours. People say your heart thumps in your chest when the person you love glances your way, listens carefully when you speak, touches you in simple ways. But, I\u2019m not sure I agree.\u00a0 When your hand takes mine, I think my heart calms for the first time in my life. My muscles relax as you wrap your fingers around to touch mine. My eyes get heavy and my body floats on the feeling, drifting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1103","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1104,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1103\/revisions\/1104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}