A lump in the throat, butterflies in your stomach. Shared glances across a crowded room, secret letters and half-made promises. All of these things and none of these things. Passion, playfulness, and delicate liaisons, we are more to each other than just the words we endlessly exchange. Let the love speak in the silence and the blank spaces. In the moments when I wake up and you are asleep, breathing softly. Your shyness fades, replaced by rawness and empathy, but also a mysterious gulf that I can never breach; always separate but curious nonetheless.
I search for you in your face, in the trivialities, trying to read the signs, but it is not in the secrets we divulge. It is in the elegance of your limbs that slowly move, dark eyes soulful and deep. But when looks fade, there will always be the gentleness you showed to me.
When the brown leaves fall, gathering in country lanes among the cows, the frost-bitten ground and isolation, there never was anyone but us.
Love defies description precisely because it teases and vexes, slips from your grasp as soon as you catch a glimpse of its ethereal face. As soon as I think I know you, you reveal yet another side to you. Just as clouds form themselves into features of what we recognise, so does love sneak into our hearts and make its home.
Even if you said nothing or just lay there, crying, I would hold you until you wanted me to stop. I never want you to feel afraid of telling me anything. An argument now is something we can laugh about later.
The reason why I am surprised when you notice things about me is because I believe we are the same person. I assumed you already knew. That is why difference in our desires is so very painful. Entwined with intimacy: this is the knowledge of another's inner being, their interior state, a flight of feeling and thought, perhaps, ephemeral though significant.
And despite that fact that it cannot be seen, heard, detected, physically, it nevertheless spins itself into the quiet frenzy of desire, pulse quickening at the thought of you.
And no one would have said it was special. No one, that day we walked along the dock, one foot in front of the other, barely speaking. Bright white sky towering above us, birds wheeling. My heart realises it has finally opened, and it is in response to you. No one could have guessed, you're not particularly impressive just to look at. But there's something in those quiet moments, as our breaths match in rhythm.
