When he shows up at my door at 1:30 am, I do not hesitate
Instead invite him in with tired arms,
Make a conscious decision to sacrifice a night of sleep
to lie in the body of a boy on my too small twin sized bed
It was not made to hold another but
this heart was

His smile is summer in the marina and feels too much like the sunsets of
red and
purple and
pink

I want to bury myself in the sand next to him beneath
A sun too harsh for our pale skin to meet, one that
will leave us burnt and peeling and laughing at our human turned starfish bodies
I want to be surprised by the freezing that comes from
running into the ocean bare and unbound but
for now all we have are the sheets we are in
so we sink further into the memory foam

Too delicate and slow for my eagerness to grab onto,
He mentions the softness of my lips as they trace his
I laugh and say
“I try”
What I really mean is
“I hope I am enough for you”
His limbs stretch across the length of the mattress, mine fold to fit his
Our cohesion in this lack of space is a packed box and
I don’t mind the suffocation

I think to myself that
this intimacy right here
is exactly what I need,
to be touched like I am important even if it is just for a moment

I decide that this hour of holding before
his eyelids fall together for the remainder of the night
is worth the 10 hours I will spend not sleeping
His breath, heavy with exhaustion, overpowers the sound of my starving heart
beating for the music of his and
that’s completely fine

I am running out of ways to
tell him he is exactly
what I want

So I let him stay as an unspoken declaration of always welcome
I let him make my bed a home with the hopes that
in turn he will make one out of me