“I know that people like talking about gazing into their loved one’s eyes, but it was never exactly Mick’s pupils that I looked into.  The inner canthus is the notch in the eye next to the nose, and there was a dip in the arc from Mick’s inner canthus to the top of his eyelid that moved me.  No matter how widely Mick smiled, he still had that aching arch.  That visible ache made me trust him.  Without it, he might have seemed too perfect.

Mick liked my back, what he smilingly called–running a big hand down my spine–my bird bones.  He lived in a world of muscled, bruising men, and I was his little woman.  There were instants I knew he imagined me small enough to curl up in his palm;  there were instants I imagined I could.

We made sense, we told each other:  Mick worked in sports and I worked in medicine, both professions ruled by the body.  ‘You heal me, doc,’ he used to say.  ‘You teach me, coach,’ I’d say back.”