A tiny poem | Love and fingerprints

“I’ll never love another woman like I love you,” he said.

But this did not give her pause; for she knew that all along.

You never love another person in the same way you have loved someone else.

Loves are as unique as fingerprints.

The one you dated before? The first one whose hand you held in high school? The one you blushed for at church camp? All were valid loves, all validly lived.

Each love has shared a part of your life, marking you like the scars that disrupt the circular fingerprint pattern–forever ingrained, even when you stop thinking of them or feeling their presence.

And, he will go on, and she will go on, to new places and changes of scene and other people–new friends, new lovers. And he will love a new girl or two until he finds the “forever” one…differently, differently than he ever loved her.

This she knew.

Still, she placed his letters in the luggage bin on the top corner shelf, along with the other letters…from the other ones, letters full of love from family and far-flung friends and once-upon-a-time flames.

This is life–a collection of snapshots and memories.

But, there are still more memories to be made, and more faces to hold, and more soil to garden and more stringed instruments to be played. Our hands need to be open, if we desire to accept more gifts/ more grace.

So, she left the luggage box on the top shelf where it belongs–shelved. And off she went–fingerprints ready to be altered in new ways.