Skin

A map was etched into her skin. Not the blue-green of tattoo, but grooves in skin, like wrinkles but more defined, clean-cut. I would let my fingers walk over her, trace the paths we’d walked all those years ago, and she’d laugh and push my hand away and tell me to make my journeys elsewhere. At the centre of her back was the centre of the town, where the lines became too numerous to see clearly. When she lay on her stomach, I’d lie next to her and just look at them, try to imagine walking through those streets again.

And as the town grew, she too grew older. The lines became more numerous and less clear. And still I’d walk them with my fingers, but now she batted my hand away and told me that this was no time for journeys.

She felt the weight of the map as it grew, and I felt my mind run through the streets, and let my eyes wander where they may.

It was no longer a town, but a city. She stayed in her bed. I ran through those streets for real, all so familiar though I’d never seen them, only felt them with the tips of my fingers. And then I stopped running.

A single line reached up to her eyes, and there it stopped, the only place I could ever call home.

(originally posted on jameshultgren.tumblr.com)