(PART 2) You Have Such Beautiful Hands by Chelsea Fagan To look at them head-on and try to take in everything that we feel at once would be like looking into an eclipse. It’s simply too much, overwhelming, almost painful in its directness. So we must, then, take little bits and pieces of them as we go and give them each their own quiet moment of appreciation. We must spend a half-hour absent-mindedly stroking their hair. We must marvel at the way they throw their head back in unashamed laughter when something is really funny. We must make love with the lights on, watching every crinkle of their face as it plays out against the movement of our bodies. We must love the real, the ugly ripples and dimples that form on human skin under the unforgiving glow of cheap household lights. We must love it because at some point we stopped preferring form over function and got to know each tiny cog in the machine, each tendon and follicle that deserves its own attention. Perhaps we will never define love, because it is far too big a term with far too many moving components to be nailed down to a single word. But if we take things individually — if we let ourselves feel the way their arm snakes behind our backs while walking, the way a palm cups a chin for a kiss, the way lips feel when buried in the crook of a neck, then maybe we can grasp what it is about this person that makes us feel so exquisitely alive. Surely they are just flesh and bone like every other lanky animal running to catch the train, but somewhere between that spot on the small of their back and that dimple that only fully forms on one side, they became what it means to be happy.