(no subject)
there are subtleties in a button. you see, two pieces lay silent together, one with his lips around the other's roundness. but they are not together made. they are pinned in place. and sometimes, touching is not enough. more than anything, a button is a hunger in a place where hunger has not even been discovered, where looks do not crave but devour light without remorse. keep buttons. save buttons. buttons that look like skipping stones. buttons with pieces missing. buttons that fit in the belly of your palm like pennies. when you begin to see buttons, you're beginning to get it.
my boyfriend went to thailand with hair and returned with none, somehow innocuously replaced with an armful of gifts. the day i picked him up from jfk airport, he carried a frail tote on his shoulder the colour of blue chinese pottery, or teeth stained with black tea, and put it into my backseat before promptly kissing me hello. his bag was overstuffed with gifts wrapped in old newspaper and kept in pink plastic bags. it jostled in the back when i drove over potholes and kept us company while he told me his stories: temples, mountain peaks, silk factories, each memory told with his pink lips, hardly contained. by this time, we hadn't been dating for long.
once safely back in chelsea, his roommates and i sat in the living room while he organized his gifts into person-specific piles, mine being the first. and though everyone's first instinct is to love getting gifts, i think it's a rather complex societal ritual. i've just been lucky, i guess, in that i have most of the things i want, but the downside is that gift receipt usually amounts to a let down. psychological analysis of the probable fact that i let very few people truly know me aside, it ends up being a precarious balancing act. every time, it's a closely scrutinized screen test.
but he sat me down on a little table in his bedroom and pulled out a small plastic bag full of buttons he has picked up around thailand. wooden ones. ones made of shell. even one with a piece missing. he gave me perhaps my first truly meaningful gift, and for the first time i didn't have to feign happiness. i look forward to the gifts he gives me now. now we're a relationship of gifting.