【by Lily Mellitz】

I love the way you laugh, head thrown back, teeth flashing, voice climbing to the sky. You could set fire
to the stars
with that laugh.
I love the way your smile is perfect in person and ghastly in photos; how some of your smiles are
only for me,
small expanses of exasperation and mockery and love.
I love when you say “shut up” all soft
and sweet
with your drowsy eyes and tender cheeks.
I love the dance of your skin on my skin,
the song of your heart beneath my palm, the melody of
your breath
tickling
the shell of my ear.

I love how your love is never followed by ‘too’, it always just is.
Not ‘too’.
Just you.

I love how we throw our words in the air with such ease, like
tossing coins into a rust-bruised fountain.
A clattering of secrets and stories
and desires and dreams
and hopes and wishes and fears.
I love how yours is the face I seek
in a crowd, how yours is the hand I wish was in mine,
how yours is the touch
I want
touching me.

Sometimes loving you frightens me. It rushes at me like
some wild beast,
a hurricane of teeth and claws and dangerous, deadly things.

Sometimes loving you comforts me. It cradles me like
a mother would her babe,
a sea of love and comfort and stupid, silly things.

Ask me how this happy accident came to be and I could not say.
But ask me how this happy accident could end, and I could supply
a thousand replies.

The now is so large, but the next is greater still.
What will they say once we are nothing but ash and embers,
when we are yesterdays and memories and shadows and
dust?

they came from two worlds and met in the middle
she wanted the stars
all he wanted was her

If our red strings of fate were to wither and die,
I pray that they let the good, the cherished, the beautiful
little
bits
remain, for I don’t know how to be a before, a lesson learned, a receding thought in your head.
I don’t know how to look at us over my shoulder, one foot
leading me away.

All I know is that I love you.

Not ‘too’
Just you.