Lips

Your lips are the most sensitive boundary between inside and outside that your body possesses. Here your inner world ends and the world begins. Here what you want to say leaves the space of your mouth — and here enters what you want to eat, drink, kiss. There is hardly another place on your body where nerve endings lie so densely packed, where sensation distinguishes so finely, where touch means so much.

Cracked corners of the mouth, dry skin that peels away, lips that are perpetually sore, a nervous pressing you no longer even notice, a swelling after a kiss you did not want, a small outbreak of blisters exactly when something unspoken is fermenting in your life. Medicine names causes: dry air, vitamin deficiency, viruses, irritants, habit. That is true — and it still does not explain everything. Why exactly now? Why again and again? Why this spot?