The tip of his index finger feels light against my skin. He taps, blends, and smears ever so gently.

“I love you and I think you’re beautiful,” he says.

It’s yet another black eye. This one, courtesy of the six-foot-tall bedpost in our bedroom. The arrangement of the furniture in the room hadn’t changed, but evidently, my brain had. I’m older. It’s hard to remember everything all the time. Where am I walking? Which way am I turned? What wall am I facing?

So, into the bedpost I walked. Another black eye. This one, though, just seemed to heal more slowly than the ones before. Another change of aging.

As his fingertip swirls the beige putty that hides the blueish reminder of my memory lapse, I realize one thing has not changed. He loves me gently. He loves me well. He loves me in ways that no one really could imagine.