I see you through fogged glass in a small café, you are sipping apple juice and reading a newspaper even though you get updates to your phone every time a new news story is published. I assume you do it because you’re nervous and your blonde hair looks beautifully unkempt and I smile, inwardly. I stand just long enough to see you take another sip of your apple juice and fumble with your hands slightly before I notice I too am fumbling with my own. We always had a habit of saying and doing things at the same time, as if our subconscious was connected on a level our conscious couldn’t keep up with. I open the café door and the bell chimes, suddenly there is no one else in the room except us and I feel the open air grow thick with excitement and nervous tension.

I would say I could feel your gaze burning the pores of my skin open, but your eyes are too blue that I could do nothing but dive into them, swallowing mouthfuls of unspoken love and all the words you’ve never needed to say as they fill my lungs and I expand. I think this is why I no longer have an appetite; this is why falling in love is so fulfilling because there is too much to chew and so much to swallow and I cannot stop feasting on the thoughts that whirlpool around in your mind. Every day is a three course meal and I am stacking up plates upon plates trying to build something long enough to stretch to the ends of you. I cannot swim but I still continue to dive, filled with mouthfuls of unspoken memories, the parts of you you’re too afraid to give away yet but I was blessed with patience. I am candlelight and you are the flame that allows me to glow, flickering in draughty bedrooms as we sway to a playlist I made especially for us entitled “beginnings” because I believe we will always feel like this. I have been strung out to dry on life’s washing line since I was a child and it wasn’t until you became home that I felt the warmth of candlelight and we become what we love.

I sit down opposite you in a small café, you say “I’ve missed you” and I tell you that I have never stopped missing you. The waitress asks what I’d like to drink and you reply “water” and I smile, inwardly. I stopped fumbling with my hands when they found yours and you persisted I try your apple juice but I was adamant it just wasn’t for me and you smiled, outwardly. I had always been inward but you had taught me that it is okay to be outward and I complimented your smile for what seemed like the hundredth time hoping it would cause you to smile and it did and I told you that you had a face even artists could not create. I told you that there are universes within me and in every single one I have created galleries for you so that no matter where I am, I can always feel like I’m home.

To drown is considered a tragedy but I would anchor myself to the very depths of you and float within the atoms that enable you to be and I would merge myself into the darkness and find comfort within the unknown because part of it resides within me and I would die to be close to you. We become what we love and all I am is a paperback of romantic poetry with brushstrokes underlining the parts that are most important and one day I will whittle to ash in the flame that burns for you in the belly of my stomach and my paperback poetry will shrivel in your whirlpool and the pen will smudge and the writing will smear, but it is ok. Because I am diving into eyes, drowning myself in mouthfuls of the poetry I never sent and choking it back to you with my own eyes so you can see all that I am and all that I ever will be and decide if my candlelight is worth keeping aflame.