it's your smile i remember. never your name.

There are people in my life whom I love. So many. They are scattered across the globe. Their smiles mark my memory. Their words burn into pages of journals that may or may not be lost in storage somewhere across parts of middle America. I am not the girl who remembers perceived near-perfection. I admire scars. I admire those who sit with me and narrate the stories of their near-misses. If those I love are marked with specks of imperfection (in the eyes of others), I tend to love them more. I don’t know why. I don’t ask. I don't really care.

Judgment is a waste of time.

Numbers rarely matter.

I have only been right when I'm truly wrong.

There are many people in my life who love me. They may not know my name. They are in the small town where I was taught the importance of effort and the significance of a warm hug or a holiday parade. They are in the Rockies where I learned that when speeding down a mountain on skis far too long, I will fall and (although it may sting) there will be reddened hands happy to hand me a hot chocolate at mid-mountain, listen to a song I’ve sung one million times and still compliment me in languages I may never understand. There are those who kiss upon the awkward scar on my forehead and kiss away my often fearful tears, assuring me that everything that hurts will someday turn to something more like a brilliant powder day ending in ski-booted laughs that no one cares to capture on film.
There are those whom I have somehow forgotten who emerge while looking through photos in my papa’s attic.

It’s the smiles that I remember. Not always the names. Not always the reasons why. But if life is meant to be lived in scenes, in moments, then it’s fair to suppose that my silly spotted memory is not much of a concern.

I love the man who drove me, wide-eyed, around the deserts of India in a horse-drawn cart and the children we passed who hummed melodies as they danced barefoot and beautiful. I love the boy who taught me how to use a payphone in London. The man who changed my dead-of-night flat tire in the middle of Kansas. The street performer in Central Park who sang harmony to my half-assed Janis Joplin. The stranger on a subway in New York City who smiled as I walked into the crowd and disappeared. The grey-haired neighbor man who proudly placed a dime into my Halloween grocery sack as a little girl. The elementary school music teacher who assured me that if I sang a song, it didn’t matter if anyone listened. The boy in the airport in Delhi in the middle of the night that lead me to a sort of spiritual awakening and a hostel that even I could afford.

There is no such thing as coincidence.

It was these smiles and the thought that names, at least in my mind, never truly mattered.

Crooked teeth are most memorable.

Actions of love are rarely found in stacks of yellowed photos.

Loneliness is an illusion that feigns reality.

Smiles are often overlooked.



Loneliness is simply the effect of living without turning your head.