Punctuation

Nervous Motion

He maintains this tenacious habit of stroking the length of his ear and the scruff along his jaw with the side of his thumb.

Nothing about this motion in him was slow or methodical. His thumb moving hastily, like a criminal escaping from apprehension after slipping a sound into the blanket of silent night; making every move up as he goes along.

He's in a trance, hardened eye contact with the work in front of him. His eyes pour over the words, his lips tracing them out as they are moved along the page.

I would wait a thousand years just to catch his milky cocoa eyes for a moment. I would allow for time to freeze, if I could only have watched him in that moment of blissful silence for a million eternities. And the warmth of his words would have to bring me home. They'd be all of everything that possibly could.

Although this thing he does with his thumb to his senseless ear and his fading jaw might have been a nervous tick, he never seemed nervous in the least to me. The wrinkles around his eyes allowed me to glance back onto the dusty roads that led him home after all that time. A smile, after all, is not solely about the pearling of someone's teeth or the fullness or complexion of their lips. A smile is made of happy wrinkles pulling themselves apart like curtains from the outer corners of their eyes. A smile is made of the tinsel you find behind their eyes when they look at you.

His thumb still dances its dance, kissing the places where kisses are warmest. I wished I could stop his hand from moving, pull it into my hand, bring myself back to the real minute.