I didn’t realize this until now but your 3 a.m. touches are what I’ve been trying to paint for years.
I didn’t realize this until now but your laughter is something I’ve been trying to recreate with piano keys during every lesson I took.
The trembling fingers that emanated each note are still the fingers that trace your skin when it’s late at night and I can’t sleep.
I sleep fine with you.
I sleep like a rock on the ocean floor that knows nothing but the current that ebbs away at its back.
Kind of like how you’ve ebbed away the sharp corners of who I was before I met you.
The rough edges of words that have sliced my skin and you apply the ointment like it’s the only way you know how to love.
I’m convinced that I knew you before I knew you.
I’m convinced that the feeling when you first scooted closer to me on the couch is how tectonic plates feel in the middle of an earthquake
or when you pull me closer right before the sun has started to rise, or when you bury your face in my neck like it’s the only shelter you’ve known.
You have not been given a very sturdy roof.
Rain has fallen on your face in the middle of the night when it wasn’t even raining outside.
Kind of like in horror movies where the blood drips from the ceiling, you wonder if promises bleed, too.
My hands may not know how to hold a hammer to a nail without smashing my thumb but my hands know how to hold you.
How some nights it feels like all I can do is double my arms around you.
“You make me feel so little,” you say. “You make me feel so safe.”
I don’t know a lot about safety but I do know a thing or two about loving.
You are my favorite thing to love.