The Surprising Thing about Being in Love

I thought I’d remember your freckles. That’s what I thought love would be like; I’d become a GPS of the little marks of you, a homing pigeon navigating by birthmarks like stars. I thought the warm, brown shapes on your skin would be familiar to me like the tree I’d climbed every day, or the kitten I’d raised.

But I can’t remember them. I shut my eyes when you’re not here, and I can’t find them anymore. So I navigate by scars.

Leaving the airport, I trace that mark on your hand from when you were a baby, touch the score in your dimple from the dog you forgave for biting your face. In the drivers’ seat of your car, I trace the line on your collar bone from when you helped someone move, the web of scarring on your lower back from carrying too much too far.

I find myself at cash registers touching the mark on the back of your heel from that awful pair of boots, or the cut on your shoulder from a box of rifles. I go over your shoulders, your abdomen, the bottom of your foot; like it’s a prayer I go over you. And when your face seems like something I made up, when even my photographs seem blurry and there’s no way you could exist for real and love me, I reach out and find your scars.

When you step off the plane with new white nicks on your knuckles, another mark on your back and the same smile in your eyes, I hold your arm and wait for my heart to come back from apart. And when you’re away again, for a day, for an hour, I close my eyes and trace our journey in your scars.