We have built a house together but we do not live in it. We have four walls of memories with lavender coloring and buttercream crown moulding. We have the intimacy of a shower with no curtains and a mirror that blushes fog when we peel our clothes off before it. I am existing here, in different stages of our becoming. But I haven't unpacked my suitcase here. I don't sleep here. I don't kick my feet up, tired from the day and exhale here. I am still on edge. Trying to curate the parts of myself that I can. That are becoming. While we are becoming more this house than what we were before it. How can you pack so much comfort in between your teeth and unleash it in the beam of your smile, while I am still lingering in the gaps? I am afraid of allowing the veneer to shift fully. To let you see the part of the moon that shines away from you and sometimes doesn't. How can I explain the darkness to you when I do not understand why it is there. Or when it will leave. If I fully rest with you, I will carry shadows with us. And you deserve the light. So I leave my suitcase unpacked. I unpluck myself from the couch. I smooth out the grooves my body's made in the bedsheets, dissolve them from memory with a gentle hand. We will close the space between us someday. We will live in the same house, in the same time. When I know I have the light in me to nourish us both from root to lavender's bloom.
