One year down and you still look at me with that same smile. You still look at me with that same, thin-lipped, no-teeth, ‘I can’t believe we’ve made it this far’ smile. Though sometimes your smiles get a bit confused and flip upside down. Don’t worry, I’ll forgive them. Still it’s best when you’re looking at me with your lipstick coated smile. And I smile back like there’s something we think is too funny to let slide it’s way through our hands. So we hold hands and we hold them tight so not a single whisper can slip between the gaps.

Our hands don’t fit perfectly together. Mine are long and cold but too soft and yours are short and wide with callouses and bite marks. I know that those are bite marks because I see you tear away at your skin when you think people aren’t looking. I know that the insides of your cheeks come apart in ribbons of red. Your teeth mash and tear against the insides of cheeks even though I try to kiss and put my palms on the outsides. You’re not going to stop no matter how much I kiss your cheeks, how tightly I cling to your hand, or even how intently I gawk at the very motions of your clicking and crashing bones. I might even call you out. I might talk about the fact I worry I’m going to come in to the amputee love of my life who just so happened chewed her arms completely off. It’d be a shame for you to lose a pair of perfectly good arms.

I’d still be with you even if you had no arms at all. I’d learn to pick things up, tie your shoes, brush your hair, pick up things. I’m not very strong but if you needed my arms to be strong I’d teach them to be. I’d pick up and put down heavy things, because that’s what lifting is right? I’ve never done it before but if you needed my arms to lift then they’d learn.

That is, if you wanted me to. I could learn how to cook for you, sew for you, I’d learn how to do it all for you if I was able. I’d learn equations, taxes, algorithms, anything with even my worst subject. There’s going to be a lot of things you won’t want me to do. I’ll do them anyway because I can’t fathom letting you struggle around without me. Not just because I don’t like it when your smile gets all messed up and flips the wrong way. There are a profound number of reasons why I do anything to make you hold happiness to your lips. Still, the most true and most apparent grounds are selfish and leave me shameless. I want to make you smile because that’s the way I’ve learned to be happy.