i liked the time i found you curled up with my copy of the poisonwood bible and you stuttered apologies for the marked and highlighted pages, for the notes in the margins, as you explained you had become engrossed in the story and forgot it wasn’t your own copy after all.
i like when you talk about barthes and foucault and try on literary theory like glasses: horn-rimmed new criticism, nice round reader-response theory.
i like when you touch me as if i were the delicate curve of sylvia plath’s bell jar, as if you know that i am at once suffocating under pressure and suffocating myself, as if you know that all i need sometimes is the singing of your fingers on the glass to give me harmony and air.
i like when you pick up the poetry collection i bought at the bookstore down the street and translate marina tsvetaeva's verse back to its original tongue.
and you never say it in english, but я люблю тебя has crossed your lips, dangerously, before you started teaching me russian, before you found out I knew enough of the language to translate that.