A lover moves out of his wife’s apartment and becomes a boyfriend. A boyfriend piles all his scant belongings into a U-Haul and relocates to Chicago full-time and becomes a life partner. A life partner files for divorce, proposing marriage on the final day I am fifty, and becomes a fiancé. A fiancé will utter vows he has written and can—unlike all the clandestine correspondence we once shared—say aloud before our family and friends and, presto, become a husband. And just like that, I will be a wife again.

There are too few words for who and what human beings are to each other.

Language is a territory still mostly uncharted.

We are the cartographers, every day, still mapping the human heart.