YOUR BODY THAT IS MY MAP


Don't get me wrong, it's not that I can't live without you. An unfamiliar sun will still rise and set, etcetera. I will make a living, I'll laugh and make jokes, I'll make love, I'll have children who have something of me in their features and something foreign too. The sky will often be blue, though it won't be my sky, and the trees will somehow remind me of other trees, not these trees.

I can live my whole life without you and very likely will; it's just that you are my home.

It's not that I think you are faultless; it's not that you are the most beautiful, the wisest or the best; that is, I wouldn't know. I can't judge. It's just that everything else is exile.

New landscapes surprise and delight me, maybe even more than yours; but it's your body that is my map; is, was, will be.




the love letter collection
submitted 7:40 AM EST
tuesday, december 30, 2008