When Robert met Audrey, his hands didn't shake. Weeks later, he would notice her hands, small and seemingly fragile. He remembered a story that escaped from her. She had told Robert how a lover choked her, how she reciprocated, how they played until an ambulance took him away. She slurred details to Robert: her tenderness for him, his small arms & thin chest, his throat's hard contractions against her palms. She wept softly, then harder.

Robert noticed her small hands, imagined them wrapped around a naked boy's throat, his face paling. A tender past shone from Robert's eye. Audrey felt suddenly warm, and weak. "I'd like you to take me for a drink," she said. "Would you do that?"

"Yes," Robert replied uncertainly. They walked down to a small bar, music low, dark pleasant. He paid for her drink, something he'd never done before. Robert's hands began to shake only after he brought the drinks from the bar to their table. They talked, as people do in the early evening.

David Winter studies creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and escapes to NYC whenever he can. Aside from escaping, he also facilitates a writing workshop for prison inmates through the Right to Write program.

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Keywords : love, damage

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