I woke up this day
   and searched for you by my bedside.

I didn't find you there.

I found you in my chest--
   beating.

When you feel like I'm starting to slip away, ask these unmade sheets how many times I've said I never want to see you go over eyes that flood tears. They'd tell you. Perhaps the warmth of my skin has lingered on its fibers. Wrap it around your body; feel my embrace.

When you feel like I'm getting cold, place your ears on these walls of white and eavesdrop to every remnant echo of burning, unsaid "I love you." They'd tell you. Find solace in the whispers of my love, in every heartbeat these walls would reverberate.

I wish you don't, but when you feel like I've never truly loved you, read every word I wrote to every inch of my red notebook. They'd tell you. I left my heart there... every single tiny crumb.

When I was younger, I wanted to be an astronaut. I told myself, "I want to see the stars and the planets up-close." I think probably we all had that stage in childhood where we all wished to be space walkers like Armstrong.

But eight years later, now I don't wish to be an astronaut anymore. I wish to be a writer. Because I have already seen all of the stars and the nebulae in your eyes. I wonder how they all got condensed in those two small circles like the moon. I whisper to myself, "It's so lustrous."

I already felt the weightlessness of space in your kisses, and your hugs are like oxygen tanks -- I need them to breathe. And when I see you-- just looking at your gait and smelling your perfume is even more enthralling than being in a launching rocket ship that pierces through the clouds and breaks the invisible mantle that separates the Earthly skies from the cosmic tapestry called "the rest of the universe". And I float away from reality and just revolve around the idea of you and nothing more like how the satellites of Jupiter revolve around it almost eternally.

I don't need to see the constellations anymore nor the planets or the meteors because I have seen them all in your skin-- I painted them on your skin. Others might call it bruises, but they do not understand that your body-- your neck, your arms, your chest are empty spaces and it'd feel like a sin not to embellish them with love marks -- the bruises that do not scream pain but* I love you's. *And I love you.

More than all the splendor of space, I still find your hair and the arch of your back and the gaps between your fingers and your clavicles so much more beautiful. Even this galaxy we live in seem to be unfit for its name: Milky Way. I think that name suits better your complexion alone. And when you smile-- oh, your smile! -- it is more radiant than the brightest comet and more warm than the hottest blue star; even the sun in the most arid summer-- it just gives me sunburns, but your smile, only yours, renders my heart melted.

When I was younger, I wanted to be an astronaut because I wanted to see the space. But now I don't anymore. Because I learned that astronauts are just spectators and I want to write about the universe. I want to write about you.

I promise you the next time I write,
   I would write your name in place with mine.

So that people would look for you and not me,
   and they would see, my love, the reason why I write.

As they gaze at your face, they would understand.
As they hear your voice, they would know
   that many a next time I would write,
   but only of one they are sowed;
   and even without you,
   I wouldn't for another.

I'd just retell our story. Your stories. How my heart has been taken. The joys. The frowns. Our very endeared moments. The tragedies.

I would retell it in a hudred different ways, but I don't think I could write for another because only you and your kisses give my pen its ink and my words the power.

I would retell it.

But I wish I never should.

I think about you. All the time. Every second of a minute, every minute of an hour, every hour of a day, every day of a month.

Even right now in utter silence, with just the purr of the fan and the clicking of keyboard keys as I type are heard, you are in my mind. You are in my mind, and I wish - if it's only possible - that you'd fall from my head, just as how you are in my vision - angelic - to my arms so I can embrace you, place my head on your chest, and just drown all other noise as I eavesdrop to the thumps of your heart.

But I looked at my arms and what I saw is my pillow. My favorite pillow. The one I talk to when I very much miss you. The one I cry to when all I wanted is for your shoulders to catch my tears. The one that put me to sleep many a night as the idea of you float in my head. I close my eyes and think of you. And in my dreams you are smiling. In my dreams you said you do miss me too. In my dreams you never let me go until I stopped crying. In my dreams I am sleeping soundly beside you with your breath as my lullaby.

Then I'd awake. Open my eyes. And think of you again, almost involuntarily. 'Cause I cannot stop, and I think I never will.

I love you.

*I really do.