The room around me is filled air that feels too tight like ***** hose when I’m on the very edge of going up a size.  You’re sprawled on the bed with the duvet scrunched under your face and between your knees.  Glasses rest by your alarm clock and I’ve woken up before it.  The hands are unreadable and I make another note to go to the optometrist sometime soon.  

I sit up and stare at you, the worry lines relaxed.  Twenties are when wrinkles start and sometimes I can see yours growing on me.  I see the sunlight drift over the planes of your face, touching your stubble and the patchwork skin you’ve worried on your lower lip; for a moment, I’m reminded of the last time my teeth caught on the slickness of your bottom lip and I smile.  The plywood box spring creeks under me and your eyelids flutter and I about face.  Somehow, sleeping with someone, being in love with someone, namely you, doesn’t give me the permission to drink in the naivety present in your morning rest.  Your arms around me in all the nights before didn’t excuse me from invading your space in the first moments of this day.

I stare out the window at a train passing by.  It’s better to stare at graffiti-clad cars I’ve seen a thousand times before in this railroad town than for you to see me watching.  You watch my frame fake interest in the engine outside and I feel the corners of your smile grasp the edges of my matching pajama set I picked out specifically for nights spent next to you.  I hear you call me cute and tell me good morning and I feel the blood rise to my cheeks as I realise you’ve been awake this entire time.

Hello, my darling.
After your first year in your third decade, how are you holding up?
You know, the Berlin Wall didn’t make it to it’s fourth decade.  Almost, but not quite.
That’s a thought, eh?
A monument meant to separate and contain for the rest of eternity fell before it was 30.
How will you, an entity just as singular as that wall, withstand?
Your odds aren’t very good.
But, then again, Reagan doesn’t have much sway over you, you’ll survive.

When you drink a glass wine to mark the passing of another year, take a sip for me.
Let the red wet your lips and pretend the thick taste is me.
Swallow hard as it slides down your throat and fall in love with me all over again.

It’s your day and the best part is that it lasts 29 hours because I’m five time zones away from your drizzling island in the east.
When I wait for you in the airport terminal one month and two days from now, I shall check the schedule fifteen times in the ten minutes I wait, gaze fixed on your flight number and "arriving on time" beside it.
I will watch “Love Actually” for the fifteenth time this month the evening before to prepare myself for the impending reunion and the waves of fulfilment that will shake my knees when I feel your heart beat beneath my hand again.

But for now, my love, drink up and make merry with your family.
One day, I will join them and trade my four seasons for rain and a warm drink with you in our own flat where photographs from our adventures sit, well-placed on shelves, windowsills, and countertops..
But for now, celebrate your life and remember the way my kisses feel when you’ve just woken up after a night of being held against me.

My shoulders are delicate
But don't assume that
Fragile
Means "Nothing".
My trapezium is a mountain
And my shoulder blades are devastating tsunamis.

Amber waves of pleasantries wash over me
Enveloping the cynical tsks in a sickly sticky scent

April grew heated
and cooled
and worked herself up
until blasting to smithereens
and giving way to the new birth of a new day and a new May.

when positive and negative charges
attempt to mingle
there is a massively destructive reciprocation of emotions,
often ending in a flash of light and nothing.

Lungs expand and contract and the diaphragm is pulled and pushed
much the same way that a boat is tugged by the current.