“
‘I
think about your thighs,’ he wrote in the second letter,
and the warm, moist smell of your skin in the morning, and the
tiny eyelash in each corner of your eye that I always notice
when you first roll over to look at me. I don’t know why
you are better and more beautiful than anybody else. I
don’t know why your body is something I can’t stop
thinking about, why those little flaws and ridges on your back
are lovely to me or why the pale soft bottoms of your New
Jersey feet that always wore shoes are more poignant than any
other feet, but they are. I thought I would have more time to
chart your body, to map its poles, its contours and terrains,
its inner regions, both temperate and torrid - a whole
topography of skin and muscle and bone. I didn’t tell
you, but I imagined a lifetime as your cartographer, years of
exploration and discovery that would keep changing the look of
my map. It would always need to be redrawn and reconfigured to
keep up with you. I’m sure I’ve missed things..or
forgotten them, because half the time I’ve been wandering
around your body blind drunk with happiness. There are still
places I haven’t seen.
‘What I
Loved’ | Siri Hustvedt
