Sometimes you have to go. You don’t leave, but you do go. I had often thought about it but I didn’t know a person could really do that. You can. You do. And as much as recognising the difference is a comfort to me, it still means an absence. It still means you’re not here. There is nothing more isolating than you not here.

Your body is the boat that will sail me to you. Upon your shoulders are the constellation that will guide me and chart my course. I love your freckles. But more, I need your freckles. Like Hansel and Gretel, I have left behind a trail of petals from lifetimes past to help me find my way back to you.

This is a comma. Some say it looks like a seashell. I know it is made of butterflies. You know what a comma is, don’t you, it means continuity. It means there’s more to come. It means it’s not over yet. As long as there is a comma, it means we can go on.

You’re the closest thing to my idea of perfect I have known. Our faith tells us that only god is perfect. Even in the finest woven silkwool carpets are made with a deliberate mistake. Because to be perfect is only god’s domain. It’s utter rubbish. Carpets can be flawless. People can be perfect. Anything can be when it is made of love. Like you.

So I will love you whole, and in fragments. In your flawlessness and even more in your inimitable imperfection. I love you when you soar. When you don’t. When you’re falling. When I catch you. Or, when you let me.

The sides of your nose. The ink nib, tray-like groove over your lip for which there is a word that I do not remember now. The frailty of your eyebrows delicate over the bone. I want to know all these places on your being. I want to know because to know is to love anew.

You are where I have grown my roots.
Your ribs are a euphemism for my hand in yours.