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.
