Do we ever really touch each other, atomically? We can’t, no matter how close we think we get, no matter how entwined we try to become, no matter how far inside we think we might—

We dance around each other, day and night, our eyes not quite meeting, our bodies opposing fields three miles thick. Requests come by courier text from rooms away, delayed on the slow current of unreliable Wi-Fi forced to travel through centuries-old concrete and stale air just to reach my filthy phone from his. Twin phones, bought new, yet so different.

Can you make me a coffee?

The clicking—click click click clicking all day and all night, the incessant click clicking of his mouse and mechanical keyboard, the same game from dawn until dusk ‘til his eyes grow heavy and then the click clicking slows but never stops.

Are you hungry?

Small words bend around corners into the thick foam-covered silence of his room, dark reds and grays checkered floor to ceiling absorbing sound as if they were designed to eliminate—and they were, and they do. And is it really a question if I plan to make dinner anyway?

The silence breeds silence breeds growth of the sounds in my ears until all I can hear is the whoosh-whooshing of my own heart and my blood, just whoosh-whooshing and thudding in my ears, so loud and so constant that when he finally speaks, I can’t hear what he says.

What?

He doesn’t repeat.

I grow tired of pretending to be entertained by my own hobbies that don’t exist because what could I possibly want more than him?

I’m going to bed.

Four rooms is an ocean of cat fur and hot air, and my phone collects silence by my side of the bed, the whoosh-whooshing my lullaby as the time between peeks at my empty screen grows until it becomes infinite, and I dream—

Your message could not be sent.

—of his fingers tracing my back, running lightly up my arms and through my hair, of his lips just below my ear, when words were sounds and phones were mouths and the tundra of sheets between us couldn’t keep us from pressing our atoms together, together, as if trying so hard might finally prove them wrong: We can touch!

We can touch.

We can.

Please, for the love of God, touch me

Adrienne Marie Barrios is a disabled writer and editor. She writes about mental health and relationships, the interplay between the two and the external world. Her work has been featured in such magazines as X-R-A-Y Lit Mag and Punt Volat. She serves as Editor-in-Chief for Reservoir Road Literary Review and edits award-winning novels. You can find her online at adriennemariebarrios.com.