Leeli-Likes

I want someone whose messages make my breath hitch, whose voice can carry me through a bad day, someone who tells me what he ate for lunch and which stupid joke made him laugh, not because the information is important but because I am important enough to hear it. My friends love me like that — and I am grateful, truly — but imagine a man whose text makes my heart do that ridiculous skip… god, would that not be something?

Because I am a lover girl. I fall in love too easily, too quickly, often silently. I don’t announce it because the world knows how to take advantage of hearts like mine — soft ones, overripe ones. He will never know how often I think of him, how sweet he looks in my mind, how I carry the way he made me feel like a little diya under my ribs. And maybe part of that secrecy is protection. Maybe part of it is fear. Maybe part is that I don’t want him to feel pressured, or obligated, or responsible for the storm he didn’t know he started. I don’t want to expect things and then bruise myself when he doesn’t meet them.

I am the kind who replays a nice text all day, who giggles at imaginary scenarios, who blushes at thoughts no one will ever hear. And I won’t burden him with it. I won’t be forward. I’ll be a sneaky lover girl — gentle, quiet, leaving warmth in his life without announcing the source. He will initiate something someday, maybe, and until then I’ll just sit here praying for him, because that’s what girls like me do.

We love without witnesses.

And still, even when he replies after 48 minutes, and the petty part of me wants to wait longer — god help me, I text back after 25. I can’t hold myself back from giving softness. I have too much of it. It spills. It overflows. Lord, send someone worthy soon, because I swear this heart is carrying more love than one body should.

I want to love. I want to be loved. I want someone to look at me and say I’m beautiful, say I brighten up his hours, say he’s better because I exist. I want to comb my fingers through his hair while he sleeps in my lap. I want stolen kisses, slow mornings, heads resting on shoulders. I want to be the place where he leaves his burdens, the one he trusts with the heaviness and the lightness.

I want to feed him with my hands, I want him to tie an anklet around my ankle, to kneel and fix my shoelaces without making a big deal out of it. I want him to send me jacket photos and ask, “Which one should I get?” I want him to care about my day, really care, not just out of politeness. I want to feel conversations being shared, not carried.

I want to feel a man’s love. I want to feel wanted. Desired, but with tenderness. Chosen, but with respect.

All my life I’ve heard whispers that I’m undesirable, and though I know that isn’t true — not entirely — there’s a little girl inside me who still aches to be proven wrong. To be shown that someone can see me and say, “You. I want you.”