What he doesn’t realize is that you know— and you love him all the same, because his freckles stain him like stars and his skin is rough and smooth at the same time, because his hair blows in the wrong direction when he faces the wind, because he lights up when he sees you though he tries to hide it in the curl of his hands, the twisting of his wrist inside his pocket, the furrow which begins to deepen on his brow. You know now, that you are all he has, and that it feels like a responsibility or an obligation, but it isn’t—only now you have the ocean at your feet and it almost feels like freedom. The shore for you has always been some kind of stigma, a tragedy on the fringe of the world, but now it is made of beginnings, a newness and calmness that mirrors your steady hands.
