Small coffee shop noises engulf us as you lead the way to our favorite spot. I sit, immediately grasping my cup for an anchor. You sit as well, Cinnamon hair flowing with olive skin and electric green eyes. You begin to speak, and honey, when I say after the first few words, my mind flew a-buzz with ecstasy. My body could’ve given electricity to the city for a week.
To bring myself back into reality, I decide to play a game of focus and clarity. I start with your lips. Soft, full, moving over words that come to me as lullabies. I watch intently as if I would be tested, catching every word with bated breath and nervous joy.
Try as I might, I can’t hear much more than the thump-thump, thump-thump of my heart.
I move to your nose. How it scrunches when you smile how it matches perfectly to the masterpiece before me. What I would give to place my lips on that nose over your cheeks over your lips to see if they match like puzzle pieces.
My eyes shift to your hair, hoping it would be boring just long enough so I could focus on what you’re actually saying. All I can hear is music as I’m reminded of chocolate-velvet mahogany-plush and think of how my hands could get lost there, how they have the many nights we spent together chatting and cherishing each other. I want to speak, but me, speaking? Right now? It would be incoherent babble slipping and falling and ailing and jumbling my words fumbling over the many times I wanted to say “I love you.” And now, given the opportunity my brain has turned to putty in your sight. I have to say something or risk you remaining the unspoken nectar on my lips.
You take my silence as permission to keep talking. I let myself rest on your eyes. Emerald, shining, almond. I could stay here forever. I blink and realize you’re waiting for my words now. Didn’t I say I was nothing but incoherent babble right now? Oh wait, that was just the incoherent babbling in my head. But I know I must say something, or you might think the worst. And even though I know sometimes we don’t need words because when we’re together, our souls communing, I have to speak.
To say I love you would be the zenith of understatement. To say I like everything about you would feel lacking in the intensity, warmth, desire, and jubilance I feel around you. Knots form in my throat as if I could burst into tears. I swallow myself down, deep and quaking, and confess, “Me too.”
My simplicity and honesty cause you to burst into laughter as our hands join. I join in. And for what has felt like an eternity, the knots ease. I feel like I can breathe. And maybe, this is how love is supposed to be.