#for fallon

Trivial things don’t matter anymore, not the way they used to. I like order, quiet, comfort - things that have a label and things that are neat, things that are easy to handle. You are none of those things - you are complicated and loud, sometimes irrational and always beautiful, and I never feel as truly alive as when I’m handling you. I realized I loved you at the same time I realized I didn’t care that you were impossible - it didn’t make me want to change you, it made me want to have you, hold you, show you off to the world and say the whole of humanity lives inside her, its mess and its recklessness, and she is mine.

You hog the bed sheets. I learned that when I woke up at 3AM, shivering, irritated, and already exhausted with the idea of letting someone else in. When I turned over, fist already bunching in the sheets, I saw your hair, messy, chaotic, sprawled over the pillows and I swooned. I don’t like watching people sleep, it makes me feel cruel, in a way, perverted and possessive, but I couldn’t help myself. In sleep, you become the quiet things I like, but it didn’t make you into something easy - instead, the moon turned you into something ethereal. My heart jumped into my chest as you breathed, even and peaceful, while your skin glowed and your blood flowed. I think it was mine rushing through my ears, but it sounded like yours, and I was bewitched by how you could consume me even in silence. I wanted to call you perfect, then, but even that word felt like a falsehood. So I said nothing, called you Goddess instead, and watched the dawn break over your cheeks.

We have too many wine glasses. An odd, silly thing to think about, but I’m used to only ever having just enough - nothing more and nothing less. When you moved in, you had a whole box devoted to them, and I wanted to laugh, but you pulled them and kept telling me there was something different and beautiful about each. It took me a long while to see it, but you grazed your fingers down each stem, traced each rim with a smile, and once, only once, lifted a glass to your nose as if you could smell the last drink it held. You fell through time, when you did that. I don’t think you noticed, but I did. For a while, it looked like you were pulling secrets from the glass - like, if it shattered, the noise would not be splintered glass but shouts of an I love you taking the flavor of a wedding wine. You came back to reality when you put it down, smiled at nothing or maybe it or maybe even my silence. I learned I loved you beyond comprehension that day, glad that you force things into nonsense. It means I have to remake the world around you into something better, something exciting.

I know you’re still sad you left him. I see it in the way you flip pancakes, or the way you brush your teeth. You lean over at odd angles, and sometimes don’t expect me to be looking you in the eye because you are so used to his height. You’re getting used to me - see, I’m remaking the world around you and you are relearning how to love a person. I’m learning that for the first time, and you’re doing it all over. I know it sounds like we’re doing different things, but really we are the same.

We’re learning to love each other.