Nobody’s ever kissed me on the cheek, and I’ve spent the last hour remembering all the little words you said that my sentimental heart filed away for a rainy day. And now the rain is pouring off the gutters and the sweater I wore that night is sitting on my desk and it really smells like your skin. I want to wear it to bed and pretend you’re here tonight but if I’m this stricken after three days, what will come of a week? I spent so many months, carefully building a wall that you wouldn’t notice, then closing the door quietly and turning the key; I hoped you would forget me and find somewhere prettier to haunt. But a few simple words were all it took to bring me back home. A simple brushing of skin against skin turned into more deliberate running of fingers across an arm or a leg, and without warning I became unable to tell where your body started and mine began. Oneness. It was harmony. With past lovers I could never get comfortable. Collarbones scraping against spines, or ribs pressing into pelvises; an unhappy clash of spirits. But with you, despite the total awareness of the heat from your hands and arms and torso warming my frozen chest, I felt as if this is what I’d been missing when people talked about love. I saw it in the freckles on your left bicep and I heard you exhale it near my temple and I tasted it when I kissed those lips that the stars had previously denied me. And I felt it. I felt love that had grown inside me each time I spoke your name, whether in praise or in vain. It grew whenever I tried to watch the news, or listened to that band I showed you, or saw a man who has light hazel eyes too. Every time I set fire to that all-consuming love, little white ash trees would spring from the ground; growing, flourishing, singing the songs of your smile.
And you kissed me a little before midnight, and one of those brave little ashes danced in the left side of my heart, and the leaves in the forest all seemed to whisper “oh is it love, the kind that’ll tear her apart.”
You kissed me on the top of my head, and under the arm you had over my chest, my heart couldn’t help but bloom. It’s the coldest month of the year, yet you thawed out the love that I swore I’d frozen away.
I ease into winter like I do the pool on the first day of swim season, and it becomes increasingly apparent that I need a pen in my hand and paper beneath its tip more than I need sweaters and splenda sweetened lattes. As my heart freezes over and thaws with love, I’ll build it a nest where it can rest from the turmoil.
With this fresh new page on a dear old friend, let the personal blogging commence.
