love sonata, in three parts

i. agape

love smells of crinkled parchment and pressed rose petals, and your thirsty lungs gulp it down with no sense of restraint. you want to taste perfumed breaths of honeyed lavender and dried lotus flowers on your tongue, to feel condensation blossom fractals on shivering skin. but instead, words fly from your nib to the paper, the notes of a love song woven from sinew and bone. fingers bleed passion into every loop, liquid desire drips softly onto the page. and you prick your finger, swirl sanguine blood into waxed seals, package your heart on the snowy back of a turtle-dove. watch as it blurs into a speck on the horizon, and gently sew yourself back together.

ii. eros

the galaxies shine and smolder in her eyes; rivers pool in her collarbones and trickle down the small of her back. slowly, you bring gaea to life. cocoa-butter kisses sprout trees and every whisper sparks an hearth; prometheus smiles as the humans hold fire in their hands again. flowers bloom along her legs and you inhale their scent like oxygen. no map can illuminate her tranquil forests or sea-salt oceans; nor do you need one to imprint her countenance in your mind. her skin feels so familiar - the soft curves of two bodies fit like puzzle pieces in the night.

iii. philia

for you, music is: the whistle of paper airplanes cutting through afternoon class, the way prisms of light filter beneath swaying tree leaves, how barefoot feet run along the edges of baked-cement pools in summer. the sound shoes make when they jump to avoid cracks in the sidewalk, or the sound of bike gears shifting furiously as you race with her in the street. you’ve never been able to start or stop this music. instead, you hear it when you’re with her, buying smoothies at jamba juice and forgetting to pick blue straws (her favorite color). and when you return, blue straws in one hand and her pinky in the other, you hope it’ll never end.