How do you make memory of what is physically present?
Every detail that is mine was once yours, too. The shade of brown my skin turns in the sun. Curls that are soft in the front and coarse in the back and wild and black and all over. You are in the heel of hands and the swoop in my back and the vein that runs from behind my knee across the arch of my right foot. You gave me the amber in our eyes. Legs that walk concrete, sturdy, searching for earth. Hands that crave touch.
We stood shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, knee to knee, the same exact proportions, until you couldn't stand anymore.
They say that beauty begets. That it compels replication.
They say that "beauty is truth, truth beauty," and this is the truest thing I know: I know this is mine, because it was yours first. I know it is beautiful, because you gave it to me.
October 2017