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I lie tracing the outlines of his face all night
Memorizing all the rough edges
For future reference
So that I never have to go one day without remembering it
His cheekbones look like they have been chiseled out of marble
Like valleys leading outwards
Pathways to map out
And sometimes
I get lost somewhere in-between his collarbones and his bellybutton
I could build myself a house there

In the middle of the night
I will awake to the sound of him snapping his jaws shut
Trying to pulverize all his pent-up angst between his teeth
Grinding them together so hard
That every morning
He wakes up with a mouth full of pixie dust and bone residue
I breathe in his morning breathe
And fill my lungs with his exhale
While he inhales all of my existence
He wears the morning so beautifully
Like a painting reflecting sunlight straight into my line of fire
Unfiltered
Unnerving
And this is the first time in my life that I have hope for a better tomorrow
I could do this for the rest of my life

I love the way he wakes up in the morning
One lazy eye at a time
As if taking me in all at once is too hard
I will find skin particles underneath my fingernails
From clawing my way inside all of his road blocks
Trying to reach his safe housed heart
I will plant at least one thousand kisses on his chest plate before we have to start this new day
His skin tastes of sweat, salt and secrets
And I may not be religious
But every time I rest my head upon his temples
I keep imagining
That if they were real temples
Then that would be the place that I would go to pray
Rest upon my kneecaps
With my eyes closed and my ears open
I usually can’t do all my senses at once

When I write
He will sing to me
Fill my ears with music, beautiful words and hope
And sometime
I will throw him a sideway smile
Only to catch him giving births to smiles himself and making them grow
Upward
Outward
Beyond
And I love the way
He shuts his left eye when he hits the high notes
Or the way he forces his eyelids to acknowledge gravity when he sings a line I know has meaning to it
I can pinpoint them all
I know all his tells
I could get used to this

And I love hearing all of his histories
About the way his feet too often left the ground
But too often got trapped by the ceiling
He is a tainted spirit with a heavy heart
That he still brings to bed with him
Lays it at the end of the bed
Like a domesticated dog
And I want nothing more than to tame it
As my own
I want to pinky swear
Thumb war
Ring finger promise
And happily ever after with him
Grow wrinkles and laughter lines filled with stories of good times
And every time I gather air
Bracing for my heart to implode
A minor earthquake making its way from my lungs to my windpipe to my open mouth to my waiting hands
He will repeat the words
“Bless your humble heart”
And bless your humble heart my dear
For there is a storm inside of me
And you
You are the calm to all of it.

Dear stomach,
I’m sorry that I breed butterflies in you. I don’t mean to. It’s just that you kind of warm up like an incubator when certain people are around and all the caterpillars kind of just, well, evolve.

Dear head,
I’m sorry for keeping you constantly busy and causing traffic jams on a regular basis. It’s just that when I’m standing at a crossroad all my decision-agony kicks in at the same time and there are just too many choices and I blank out.

Dear heart,
I’m sorry for making you run a lifetime marathon involving shorter sprints that make me out of breathe and then just come to a full halt. It’s just that I like to keep you on your toes.

Dear hands,
I’m sorry for neglecting you the touch and texture of other people’s skin.  

Dear fingers,
I’m sorry for keeping you away from the act of entwining with others fingers.

Dear knees,
I’m sorry for giving you bruises and cuts from all the constant falling down I do. I guess I’m just clumsy and reckless and don’t watch what I’m doing half of the time. The other half is used to being too scared to move. And when you don’t move it’s easy to not stumble. But then I feel stuck. And I’ve never liked the feeling of being stuck. So I keep on moving. And falling. So, yeah, sorry about that.

Dear lips,
I’m sorry for denying you the pleasure of pressure. You are cracked, chapped and crooked as a way of punishing me.  You’re angry with me for not rubbing you raw against three-day-old stubble and stinging from cheap, store-brought aftershave.

Dear cheeks,
I’m sorry for always making you run a few hundred degrees hotter than normal.

Dear blood stream,
I’m sorry for all the adrenaline rushes, hot flushes and small-time crushes. I work you overtime and your get underpaid. Not much more that needs to be said about that. Expect the I’m sorry part of it all.

Dear all my body parts,
I’m sorry for not treating you better. I owe you all a lot. Thanks for functioning anyway. Thanks for understanding the way of gravity and for keeping me vertical when everything tends to slid horizontally. Thanks for keeping me updated on all my functions, aches and limbs. Thanks for being totally totally awesome.

Thinking back to our nervous text messages back and forth and planning our first sleepover still brings butterflies to my stomach. Not those pretty ones though. The suicide ones. The ones that throw themselves against every acre of my gut. Not because I didn’t want to be in his bed, breathing his carbon dioxide on my bare neck so that it would awake the goose bumps sleeping under my skin. No, not because of that. It was because the thought of actually being in his bed for an entire night made me more happy than I think I have ever been before. It made my skin bounce and itch and vibrate. It made me feel awake. Alive. 

There was no sleeping that night.