The day they buried his husband, Jonah felt him touch the back of his head.

It was unmistakable. Jonah sat on the edge of the bed after the funeral, hunched over to pry off his shoes without untying them. For a moment his hand was there. When he was alive, his husband would greet him with the same soft touch just above the nape of his neck. Jonah sat up and looked around, but the sensation retreated.

Over the next few weeks, as he started to forget about it or explain it away, he felt it again: a gentle pressure between his shoulder blades guiding him to the bathroom where he finally brushed his teeth and showered. Another time, when he was crying in bed, an invisible hand stroked his back.

It reminded him of when they first fell in love, how they would communicate in secret, silent touches no one else could see: legs pressed together under the table, knees touching during Bible study, fingers walking across his lap when they shared a hymnal. When they were alone and quick and careless they pressed their bodies together, barely long enough to feel each other’s heat, and separated before they could be caught.

Now, Jonah couldn’t decipher the meaning of this contact. Sometimes he spoke out loud and asked what he was trying to tell him, but there was no response, and Jonah knew he was alone again.

 It had been a month when he walked into the tattoo shop without an appointment. He told the young woman with magenta hair and a ring through her nose what he wanted. He wasn’t sure what he would say if she asked why, but she didn’t. She asked if it was his first tattoo, and he said it was. She asked if he was sure he wanted such a big piece for his first, and again, he said yes.

The needle didn’t sting the way he thought it would, but it burned, like fingernails scraping a sunburn. It pressed the ink over the same places, darkening the lines, the pain compounding each time the machine retraced its steps.

You get desensitized to the pain, the artist said, peering over her glasses as she worked. Your body releases endorphins so it doesn’t hurt as much. Some people even enjoy it.

Jonah wondered how long it would take for the pain to turn to numbness, and maybe even pleasure. It didn’t feel that way yet. Each time it returned the ache intensified.

When the artist was done, he stood with his back to a mirror and examined it through another mirror in his hand. The entire alphabet spread out behind his ribs. His shoulder blades sheltered the “Yes” and “No,” and across the middle of his spine was the parting word he forgot was on the board.

When he was young, at sleepovers during the summer, his friends played it like a game. He was afraid of it, but still put his fingers on the planchette, riding along as it slid across the surface, pointing toward a message from beyond. He knew God would punish him, but he would ask for forgiveness later.

He stopped believing in God and divine punishment long ago, but grief brought back many of his old habits. Maybe this was his punishment, he thought, for his passive dabbling in the occult, for his life of homosexuality: the love of his life ripped away from him too soon, with so much he still needed to say, ask, hear from him again. If it was, there was nothing left to atone for, and in his damnation at least he was free.

Weeks passed and he felt nothing, aside from the itchiness of the tattoo healing. Then one night, he woke up with the feeling that someone was there. He couldn’t move or speak, couldn’t sit up or look around or call out a question. He waited, paralyzed, for him to spell it out for him. But all he felt was a featherlight caress below the letters, over and over again along the same strip of skin.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.