Tarnish

Cars, Books, Jewelry… and men; I have always loved things with scratches and dents, a little bit of rust and dust, with stories to be told within the imperfections that show experiences not taken for granted… and a life well-lived. I’ve never been drawn to things that are shiny and new. I don’t want to be careful with you, the way one would be careful with a new paint job. Taking life delicately, because you are afraid of taking a scratch… is not, never has been, and likely never will be, the way I live.

I would rather run my fingers slowly over your frayed edges and wonder who before me has run their fingers over the same lines… was it them who frayed your edges by lovingly caressing your lines and edges a thousand times over, or left a dog-eared corner on a particular page, meaning to revisit a phrase… only to close your cover one day, and never return? A new book doesn’t hold the stories of readers that have come before… a new book still smells of warm factory paper and not much else. Its cover may hold a few fingerprints of those who have breezed over the cover art while skimming a shelf, but this isn’t really the same as being handled by someone who has intimately fondled every page of every chapter while fingers dalliance on papers edge as eyes dance over and between your lines … a new book doesn’t hold cleft pages within, where someone’s tears have fallen between your lines and become part of the story.

I don’t want a piece of jewelry that has never lived a life outside a highly lit display case… I want to wear the ring that was found in the back and bottom of a box, in the back corner of a closet, labeled “Keep or toss?” on a sticky note that is slowly losing its adhesive properties with every piece of dust it collects on its furled edge. I want the ring with the scratched and scuffed band, which is slightly more oval than round these days, from being bent out of shape and repeated efforts of repair over a long life of being loved, worn, resented, neglected, lost… found… and loved all over again. That ring knows what it is to be loved, hated, cherished, adored, thrown away… and forgotten; only to one day be found again by someone new… and loved for reasons she can no longer see in herself.

I want the necklace with the broken chain… the one that was once a gift from a lover, worn every day since, and being present around someone’s neck for every spritz of perfume, every tender kiss… every whisper shared closely between lovers and every heat of passion that floods a body in pheromone laden sweat… I want the necklace that was worn every day until it became a reminder of heartbreak and was ripped from the wearer’s neck in a gesture of forsakenness. I want that old, unloved, and intentionally forgotten necklace on the broken chain… I will mend it with a single new link, shinier than the rest, only for the purpose of reminding us of something new; That we can live more than once, and who we are to someone, may not be who we are to someone else…!

I have no interest in the smell of new upholstery, squeaky leather seats, or perfect paint that has no surface texture. I would rather joy-ride in old, worn-out seats that carry memories of sunshine highways, holding hands in the breeze, laughing at each other’s stories and memories of spilled beer on the upholstery as we maneuver around the stick-shift… and each other, on summer nights filled with freedom, laughter, the feeling of just “being alive” together, and the unspoken knowledge that this moment will never come around the same way twice! I would rather cut myself on the mangled and rusted edges of torn metal than bore my senses with an untested machine that has never really left the lot!

Just as I have no interest in living timidly for fear of scratching a new paint job… I would spend the rest of my days tentatively fine-tuning an engine that someone else swore: “will never run again, and never ran right to begin with!”. Because maybe it ran just fine all along… and they just didn’t know how to drive it…!

I will always love lost and forgotten things… things that have been discarded by others because their worth couldn’t be seen by the eyes that were looking, or because their value was seen to expire, simply because life changed directions. I will always love the broken things, that were made to believe they were no longer lovable.

I love you because of your tarnish… not in spite of it!