i kept this love for you hidden in my veins like drugs or alcohol, like you could just find it on my breath if i leaned in too close or too soon. i blink and i hear your voice/feel your touch. i blink and i can almost rewind to those sweet winter days, the spring, the summer, the days you called me beautiful. falling for you was not seasonal. it was yearlong and so heavy lidded and blissful.

i still want to grow old with you. i want to ask you, “honey, did you feed the fish?” i want to go on our one hundredth date and still get butterflies. i want to look into those beautiful eyes and know that right then, right there, i’m looking at my whole ******* world. i want to wake up with your body so tangled with mine we could be mistaken for a singular, otherworldly being. i want to come home later in the day and tell you about my day at work as i’m in the recliner and you’re massaging my shoulders. i want the purest softest love the universe can muster.

you make me sure of one thing, and that is that love transcends. period.

everything about you is a reminder of what love is to me. and i want to protect that love more than anything in the world, okay?