I closed my eyes last night and thought of how abstract art makes sense. I tried to “see” my toes and legs and hips with my eyes closed. I was trying to feel, only with the sense of touch—my toes against each other, my legs against the bedsheets, my hips against my own skin. I could only come up with a rough sketch that didn’t match the exact picture I’d seen before in the mirror. I think similar when in love—opening my eyes and seeing, closing my eyes and feeling.

There is a certain emotion still that goes with even the roughest sketch. Something that just barely looks like a face, only the curve of one side of the jaw, a shadow between the eye and eyebrow, a line where scalp meets hair—individually, these marks, shapes, colors are nothing; together, they represent all the faces that we’ve loved, hated, longed for, and feared.