I feel like I’m the only person who looks up at the sky as it rains. Everyone else around me scurries past with their hands over their heads or protected by the plastic canopy of an umbrella but I love the feeling of light drizzle misting my upturned face; nothing separating my skin from the saturated sky. The only time I felt an exception to this restorative receptivity was when you walked me up the stairs and paused beneath the eaves of the building doors. I stood; absorbing the warmth emanating between us in that narrow entrance on a rainy January afternoon, suddenly feeling grateful for this excuse to avoid the rain instead of characteristically running into it, wondering if you were also relishing the short seconds spanning such a discernible lingering at the end of our conversation.
I’ve always asserted that I was built with equal parts fire and water, a Piscean balance perpetuated by the ink tattooed onto my knuckles. But when I’m with you, I vacillate between an irrepressibly roaring pyre and a restless squall assailing the sea; a state of constant chaos with no semblance of equilibrium. I surreptitiously sneak glances at you to see if you can secern the catch in my breath when you take a step closer and I feel my entire body burst into flame. I wonder if you can feel the reverberating tremor in my bones when your fingers brush my shoulders and I fight to keep myself from melting into your hands; a glacier reduced to a rush of dangerously rising waters.
I realized today the depth of how I feel towards you, that it’s not something purely physical or putting you on a pedestal. I want you to know all the smallest parts of me. I want you to see what a black and blue mess I am and I don’t want you to let go of my hands. I want you to know that my blood always runs too hot and how much I loved the way your face lit up when you heard your favorite song. I want you to keep worrying about me and getting annoyed at my lengthy excuses and laughing at my brazen admissions. I want you to know how often I lose my phone and how much I miss my mother. I want you to know when I’m having a bad day and how much I depend on my friends. I want to keep making you laugh when I describe myself too honestly and confess just how much discipline I lack. I want you to realize these are my concessions that I need someone like you in my life; someone to slow me down and keep me from falling and steady me when I lose my balance and hold onto my phone so I don’t misplace it and remind me to stop drinking so much and get frustrated whenever I sell myself short.
I love how you look for me in a room when I’m always hiding and how you seek me out and sit beside me while I curl my arms around my bruised knees to keep myself from reaching out and touching you. I want our fingers to brush, our shirt sleeves to graze, our knees to buckle, our eyes to exchange. I love observing your chin in between days of shaving and wondering what it would be like to trace a trail along your stubborn stubble. I wish you knew what it meant when you walked me outside after weeks of self-torturous speculations, all the nights spent analyzing your responses to my advances and deciphering how you might feel about me.
Today, with every step you took beside me, I felt you growing closer and closer; walking in parallel strides instead of in ever-opposite directions. I wish you knew the feeling in my chest when you paused for a breath, just standing still for infinite minutes with no one else but me, while I wracked my brain for ways to expand such a brief moment into another length of forever.
I want it to rain for an eternity, a vaporous veil dividing the rest of the world from you and I.
noted things 