This is the shape of Caroline in outline form. The person is not present, but I know what belongs between the lines. She’s made up of yarn, music, seashells, crashing waves, tears, smiles, uncertainty, love, curiosity, words from a dozen languages, characters from books, movies, cartoons, German bread and pickles, and people she’s met. Caroline is larger than her physical being as her eyes have consumed the stars, the ocean, the mountains, and the trees. The desert knows her, and she knows it, but neither is bored of the other as there is so much to try to know. This woman is resilient and fragile, expansive and tiny, sometimes difficult and sometimes so very simple.

From her outline, you cannot see her eyes, but I can. You will never know her scent as I do, nor the softness found along the contours of her skin. A pencil drawing doesn’t explain her exacting need for certain things to be in order while other things are allowed to fall into disarray. Why does an outline of her even exist? Because she has dreams that extend beyond her sleeping hours for things, she can adorn herself if only she can examine herself in real size.

If this outline were filled with the words “I love you” from all the times she’s heard that from me, there would need to be hundreds of these stacked one upon the other. The only thing missing in the drawing above is one of me next to her, holding her hand, because that is the eternal image of who we are.