love is memorizing her freckles. it’s knowing which ones form tiny constellations across her face and neck and forearms. it’s taking up residence between these landmarks, creating tiny civilizations within the boundaries of her body, so intimate and familiar.

love is knowing the stories of his scars. it’s the way her fingers drift reverently across them without thought, the way she wishes she could press her fingerprints indelibly into his skin.

love is leaving the light on. it’s crocuses peeking through soil and sugar caramelizing in a hot pan. love is green and blue and soft and grey. it simmers and boils and sizzles and steams. it’s a symphony and a sonnet, a half-written song and the missing six of spades

love is dog-eared pages of favorite books. it’s torn-out articles and letters in the mail. love is gentle and fierce. it stretches and surrenders and bends over backwards. it’s the wind in his hair and her grandfather’s tie. love is dilated pupils and freshly stained wood. it’s drips in the paint and hand-blown glass, grass stains on new trousers and snow angels in the sand.

love is reading between the lines and lipstick left on the rim. it’s the brooklyn bridge at sunset and the first night in a new home.

love is memorizing her freckles. it’s the way they line up perfectly with his scars.

irwin:
i’ll be pulling into your area about the same time as this package. and though you may not see me, i’ll be staying close, and doing all i can to get you home, from now until the day you ARE home. meanwhile, here’s the skinny on a pitch i threw in your honor last night. it was stupid, of course. there will be consequences of course. but like you i believe there is a time for crazy gestures. this WP stands for “war prayer.” god bless you, and god bless your tube of gleem. see you soon.

love,
papa

p.s. to major keys. i know you’ll intercept this, and i doubt you’ll show it to him. but i’ll be there soon enough, with plenty more copies. you’ve got two crazies on your hands now, major. and more where we two came from.

(i’m still weeping.)

“once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. i loved it. i answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one i lingered over. i sent him a card and i drew a picture of a wild thing on it. i wrote, ‘dear jim: i loved your card.’ then i got a letter back from his mother and she said, ‘jim loved your card so much he ate it.’ that to me was one of the highest compliments i’ve ever received. he didn’t care that it was an original maurice sendak drawing or anything. he saw it, he loved it, he ate it.
”

— maurice sendak

so the moon is a thing.

i know, of course it is, but think about it: it’s this glowing incandescent orb that we can see, that we write off as a tiny and mundane part of our every day lives, even though for most of us, it’s very nearly untouchable and thousands of miles away. there are a precious few people who have walked on the moon, only a small selection who have placed their indelible footprints on its surface while manifesting the careful training they’ve been partaking in for numerous years. there are people who have devoted their lives to the moon.

the moon is a thing, even as she sits there smiling coyly, knowing she’s about to let you remove her blouse. the moon is a thing when he says he doesn’t love you anymore, and still a thing when he says he was a fool and wants nothing more than a future with you. the moon is a thing when you have your first child and still a thing when the last of your brood graduates from high school. it’s a thing when you order a cobb salad and a thing when you skip dinner in favor of another cocktail with an old college roommate. the moon is a thing no matter what we do, no matter how many of us live or die or persevere: it sits there watching us, snickering slightly as it witnesses our great successes, our horrific missteps. 

there are few things as dependable as the moon, and even fewer things remotely as beautiful. and this, on this saturday night, is what i believe love should be: a constant yet ever-changing presence, both untouchable and ever so familiar, simultaneously omnipresent and thousands upon thousands of miles away.