Cups of coffee and plates with sugar crumbs from pastry warm with cinnamon and cardamom, and books overturned on antique tables with scruff marks and scratches, loved, well-used, (and me, in the middle of it all, listening to the heartbeat of this country and its sincerity, learning wisdom through small things). He is a six foot springtide of caffeine and literature, effervescent with sincerity and kindness and warmth. I smile at him over the rim of my cup, and suddenly I am swept up and moving with his current, in love with him and a summer spent scribbling into casebound notebooks and with my hair flying in the wind that rustles the trees around us, and with his lips on my neck. Wild roses on brick walls and wooden window frames, and the lavender growing on the curb all smile, content to witness summer love bloom like all things tend to do, in this season and this place. I let him explain to me the stars in nights that never seem to really begin but last forever; he teaches me in not-quite darkness what they mean, and I tell him under fairy-lights how small I feel in the multitude of this universe. He nods solemnly and I feel his breath in my hair, holding me on this earth as he shows me galaxies.