Souvenir

“Remember,” my mother says. “Don’t touch what’s not yours.” Everywhere we go. Home stores with rows upon rows of sparkling glasses. Other people’s homes with shelves of knick-knacks and whatnots. Department stores dripping exquisite ornaments from the branches of artificial Christmas trees. “Look, but don’t touch.”

I am a well-behaved child.
I don’t touch what’s not mine.

Eventually, “I don’t have to say it. She knows.”
But she says it anyway. “Don’t touch.”

Smooth fabrics, textured papers, juicy fruit-flesh.
I want to touch. At the MoMA, it’s a conscious struggle to keep my fingers off the Van Gogh’s. Gobs of thick pigment prickle out of the sky of “The Starry Night”.
I stand before it. I look. I buy a postcard and go home.

Can you regret it, not touching what’s not yours? Can you regret it so much, it hurts all the way down to your fingertips?