She leaves notes around the apartment sometimes —
not texts, actual notes on actual paper —
and I keep finding them in unexpected places:
tucked inside a book I was going to read next,
on the counter under my keys in the morning,
beside the coffee machine with no explanation required.
Her handwriting is specific, a little rushed,
the letters connected in a particular way I’d know anywhere.
[Chorus]
Her handwriting is one of the things I’d know anywhere —
in a stack of pages, in the dark, by feel —
the particular pressure she puts behind the pen,
the way the y’s go long and the t’s cross fast.
Her handwriting is the record of a person thinking —
the note in the margin of a book she’s reading,
the grocery list that’s secretly a love note
if you know how to read between the items.
The grocery list is its own language, actually.
She writes it how she thinks, not how the store is laid out —
produce next to canned goods, spices between the dairy —
and I used to try to reorganize it into aisles.
I stopped. The way she writes the grocery list
is the way she moves through the world in general —
her own internal logic, completely consistent,
a logic I’ve been learning to move alongside.
I’ve found notes from years ago sometimes —
in jacket pockets, in the back of notebooks —
and reading them is a different experience than getting them,
less immediate, more layered, more archaeological.
The distance between now and the note’s occasion
makes the handwriting visible in a different way —
I see it as an artifact of a specific day,
a record of what she was thinking on that particular afternoon.
[Chorus]
Her handwriting is one of the things I’d know anywhere —
in a stack of pages, in the dark, by feel —
the particular pressure she puts behind the pen,
the way the y’s go long and the t’s cross fast.
Her handwriting is the record of a person thinking —
the note in the margin of a book she’s reading,
the grocery list that’s secretly a love note
if you know how to read between the items.
There’s a note I’ve kept without telling her —
it’s from the bad year, the year I mentioned,
the year when keeping notes was not in her repertoire
because she was using everything she had for other things.
And she left one — just a short one, in the morning —
and I kept it because it was proof that she was still there,
proof that even in the bad year there was still this,
still her handwriting, still the note, still the trying.
I should probably tell her about the kept note.
She’d be surprised, and then she wouldn’t, and then she’d —
well, I know exactly what she’d do, and it’s good.
Maybe I’ll give it back as its own kind of note,
tuck it somewhere she’ll find it unexpectedly —
inside the book she’s going to read next,
beside the coffee machine one morning, no explanation required.
The handwriting she’s been leaving for me, finally returned.
[Chorus]
Her handwriting is one of the things I’d know anywhere —
in a stack of pages, in the dark, by feel —
the particular pressure she puts behind the pen,
the way the y’s go long and the t’s cross fast.
Her handwriting is the record of a person thinking —
the note in the margin of a book she’s reading,
the grocery list that’s secretly a love note
if you know how to read between the items.
I know the handwriting better than my own by now —
I’ve read it more attentively than my own —
and when I find a note I didn’t know was there
it still does the thing that the first one did.
Not the same thing, not that new-thing feeling —
something richer, something with the weight of years in it —
the thing that happens when what you love most
keeps showing up in the handwriting you’d know anywhere.