out in the lobby, standing around, breathing in that familiar smell of cinema popcorn, different to the kind you put in the microwave for two minutes and watch spin around in the heat. we were watching people coming and going, the nighttime inhabitants streaming in for the late-movie - even later than ours - and me just wanting to turn around, disappear with you and go back into that dark and quiet space of cinema four where your hands couldn’t keep off my skin and nothing else existed. it seemed better, then, better than walking out from our date-that-wasn’t-really-a-date and facing the cold, facing our inevitable goodbye where i didn’t know if you were going to kiss me or even if i wanted you to kiss me, facing my friends with all their probing questions, facing my parents when i get home, and then, of course, the long and lonely wait until tomorrow when you’ll pick me up in your car in the morning and i’ll struggle, not knowing if it’s okay to call you my boyfriend and if i myself am now a girlfriend.

the small bumps and hiccups of the rattling carriage startled you awake. the green seats of the train were lined with cheap vinyl and stained with coffee. they held us in the glow of early morning and the glare of midday and the grimness of night. i looked up from my book and locked eyes with you. i wanted to whisper poems of e. e. cummings into your ear but you were so peaceful as you closed your eyes again, sinking into that place where you are both awake and asleep yet neither.
words of poetry could not bring to mind the softness of your skin as you sunk low into your seat, nor could they rival the prettiness of your closed eyelids and the way you curled your hands into paws using the sleeves of your sweater. i wanted to stay like that with you forever.

"i'm so bored with it all," winston churchill said, before slipping into a coma and dying nine days later.

each time you kiss me in unknown and untouched places, like the backs of my knees, the curve in my spine, the flesh behind my ear, the insides of my ankles; each time you run your fingernails down the expanse of my stomach, across my arms and the curves of my thighs; each time your tongue marks dates and times and places and memories onto my fingertips, and cheekbones, and *******; each time you drag a pen over my skin, drawing hearts and flowers and guitars, tattooing phrases and numbers counting down the days and hours to this and that; each time, you add a poem to my body.

yesterday, we were at the art gallery, wandering hand in hand, ducking into corners when rowdy groups of school kids ploughed past, sneaking kisses by the displays.
i had blisters on my toes, a product of them rubbing against the sides of my boots (on the train beforehand you leaned over and whispered into my ear that they were cfm - standing for come **** me - boots and i was astounded and pleased and trying not to make eye contact with you on that crowded standing-room-only train, wondering if other people could read our ***** thoughts) so i'd pulled them off and was slipping and sliding in my socks on the wooden floors.
it was a perfect day, really, but the only piece of art i remember seeing was you.

it was the city we talked about in those long nights when we had nothing to say, lying in your bed and memorising the way the dark painted shadows across our cheekbones and jaws. melbourne, you would whisper.
a city far away and cultured and quaint and brimming with old buildings and trams and coffee houses and american things like seven-elevens and starbucks.
it was different being there with you. much more different being there without you.

you were leaning against the frame of your back door, backlit and beautiful with the setting summer sun casting shadows on your face. i felt so alive in that moment, with the days stretching before us, and the countless days behind us, the ones we'd already blazed a trail through. i could remember the feel of your smile on mine from the night before and wondered if you would do it again. the stars were not on my mind at all; why would they be when you were looking at me like that and your jawline told stories of long nights past and i could smell strawberries in the air?