get bent

i miss you like crazy. the way you leave one bulb of your string of lights lit so that we can speak softly under an isolated glow, the way your back warms my chest when i press against it. every night with you in your room feels like the first. your soft blankets, the darkness all around us, save for the one bulb and the flush of your cheeks, you a beacon of light...

i see you as the sun, orange and fiery tones, or maybe the sky, because the sky has the sun but also blue like your eyes. but i love you more than i love the sky.

i never tell you when we wake that you’re brighter than the daylight streaking into your room. i should sometime — but when i do, it comes out trite. the words don’t do it justice. a golden color palette before me, even your freckles tuned to the sun now, your eyes squinting joy at me from the moment you wake.

no one has ever, ever looked at me like that. with the same intensity that i look at you. and yet you return it all, unafraid, gleeful at the promise of a new day together. you soothe away the anxious tears that someone else might tell me are undeserved.

you know better than anyone what it is like to be too in touch with the universe, feel the vibrations of the collective being shake your core. you tell me what hurts you in the same way, and i hope i can touch that raw, aching part of you and apply the sweetest salve. you deserve a balm for your suffering — you are too kind, and too warm, to ever feel like that. but i know that you still will, and i love you (completely, entirely, unabashedly) for caring more than everyone else.

you think that when we are in a group of people, sipping at something sweet over a board game, that you are being foolish, but i watch you flush at your own jokes and i am astonished by the gentle warmth you hold over a room. the love you radiate. your drive to pull giggles from stubborn, laughless throats.