Perfect Fit

I keep trying. Different moulds, different patterns, different cuts, different sizes, different materials, different colours. Over one hundred attempts now. Over three weeks. Over smiles, curses and tears.

“I found them in an antique shop.” You smoothed the tan fingers of the glove around your fingers. “They fit as though bespoke, don’t you think?” You held your hand out for me to feel, examine, appraise. “I love the way the cuff drips like a fin from the edge of the thumb. The change of colour. A chocolate fin.” You laughed then. That’s when I was lost.

You kept them on after you removed everything else. I never felt your touch. I remember your laugh, your sighs, your promises, but I never felt contact that night, never skin on skin.

Before you left you dropped the right hand glove on the bed, promised you’d return in one month, promised you’d stay forever on one condition: “Make me something that fits closer, something no one else could ever wear, something that would bind us forever.”

It finally hits me. I look down at my body and wonder where I’d miss it most, where would heal fastest. I pick up the knife. Skin to skin. Less than seven days to manufacture and recover.

One size that would never fit all.