(PART 1) You Have Such Beautiful Hands by Chelsea Fagan There are moments when we look at the one we love, but we cannot really see them. We become overwhelmed by everything that composes them: the quiet moments that have passed between us, the cries of ecstasy, the tears that only we saw. It is as though they are less a person and more an amalgam of everything they have done, everything they mean to you. And when you look at them, across a table or while they’re still asleep, there is so very much there to see. There is a sense that, after a certain point, every shared glance and whispered conversation consists merely of the few tiny droplets that we can gather from the river of meaning that flows between us. There is so much to say, so much to know, and so little time to do it all in. Words become insufficient; physical appearance becomes secondary. That face — the one that is filled with the laugh lines and dimples you feel you have almost carved yourself — is simply the packaging for everything that exists which you cannot describe. And the more that person becomes a construct of your shared life, the more you need to focus on individual things to allow your brain to process the enormous emotional undertaking. To simply look at them and think, “I love this person. They are beautiful.” is both insufficient and impossible. No — you must deconstruct them and pull them into little pieces that you can understand, one at a time. Their hands — the soft, delicate, warm extremities that can at once make me feel so beautiful, so desired, so safe — they are perfect. Their eyes — the way they look at me, that unbearable look that asks of me so many promises I suddenly want to make — they are stunning. Their laugh — that honest, loud, infectious bellow that fills the room, never more so than when a joke is just between the two of us, bringing us to tears alone in bed — it is happiness embodied.