At night, I read until my eyes are heavy and then turn off my lamp.
Rolling over, I kiss you between the shoulder blades, smell the small of your neck, feel your heat mixing with mine, your skin against my skin.
I follow the curve of your side, your ribs down to the valley of your waist and the sudden, impossible rise of your hip.
I press my face into your hair. You shift slightly, pushing back towards me. Mixing up where I end and you begin, who is you and who is I, and whatever makes us think we are anything more than one.
I massage your thighs, loosen the tightness in your hamstrings, run fingers across the lines that mark out new shapes where your legs meet your body.
A single person’s body is an endless space of curves and edges, risings and fallings, textures and smells. Here a swoop, there a dropping off, and there again a
sudden stop.
We are skin and bone and hair and blood and breath. We are earth and stars and water and light. We are yesterday, today, and forever.
Side by side. My arm between the fullness of your breasts. Your fingers entangled in mine.
We fall asleep.