I get it now.
I finally understand what you meant when you told me you loved me the same... Just less.

You compartmentalised our love; it became a box you would open and indulge in while my touch still reminded you of it's power.
You would crack the lid and let it's light pour over you, let it seep into the deepest cracks of your soul and mend them.

Validate you.

But then my fingertips left your skin to trace the lines of this earth and feel the salt of an ocean continents away.
You have forgotten how my love moved mountains for you.
So now I will lose myself in your letters and bask in our memories with a smile, thanking you for our time together.

You will forever be the boy who taught me how to love completely and recklessly before I knew the pain of heartbreak, and I will always love you the same... Just less.

The past few months have flowed and bled together.
An intense ocean of passion and emotions which simultaneously nearly drowned me and sailed me to the most beautiful shores.
Where days turned to weeks and nights were spent losing track of where my skin ends and yours begins.
Where the rest of the world melts away as the tip of your tongue paints masterpieces that could rival the Sistine Chapel were the act of creating them holy enough.
Where your presence is the only thing I can feel, as though the only place that is real hides behind your Brazilian flag and green curtains.
Where my fingertips trace "I love you's" as your breath slowly slides along my neck.
I am intoxicated by your lips and addicted to your skin on my skin.
My fingernails begin scratching "I want you's" and "I need you's" into your back which you reciprocate with hands sliding down my sides, gripping, carving indentations into my thighs.
I am in ecstasy and your hands, like those of Bernini, masterfully mould my body into Saint Teresa.
Our faces inches apart, your breath becomes mine.
Our chests touch, is it my heart or yours racing against time?

Time.
A paradox.
If it seems impossible for something to be both finite and infinite, all you have to do is love someone.
Limitless and all encompassing; love has no time and yet I count down the days until your smile becomes only a memory, one which I find replaying on the backs of my eyelids as I try to fall asleep at night or in pixels on a screen when, in a moment of weakness, I break my promise to myself to never open that album. The one where I can find your brown eyes staring into mine, the one where a genuine smile lights up your face and I feel the happiness you felt in that moment, the happiness we felt in absolute, finite, infinite love.

And I know that I will not cease to love you once you disappear behind metal detectors and Hawaiian shirts.
Because I love you. Simply.
And I don't mean that I simply love you. No, I mean I don't love you in a simple way.
My "I love you" finds it's way into "how was your day?" and "don't forget lunch". It slips between your fingers and squeezes your a hand a little tighter just to feel a little closer. It presses it's lips softly against your cheek in the early hours of the morning while the world still sleeps, hoping it's gentle touch dances with the dreams in your head.

Thank you for everything, I (still) love you.

we used to sound like
impatient hands
and
sweat stained sheets
now all I hear
are forgotten promises
and
dropped calls

We were a waste.
       wasted mornings
              spent in the comfort of each other's arms
       wasted afternoons
              spent side by side
       wasted evenings
              spent between sheets, letting our wandering hands waste time
              on their way past our waists

*~ now I'm just wasted