Other Half

I trace every inch of revealed skin with a feather like brush of my fingertip, my gaze following saucer wide from smooth parchment to juniper eyes, blown so dark from their affection I can scarcely make out the ring of spring.

But I do.

And I see a flicker of a smile- tentative and new as my wandering hand that never strays from where is appropriate, because I will not ruin this. Will not ruin her. I refuse.

For once, every thing in me agrees.

Her lips quiver like my hands when we kiss, one of her firsts in her life, the only of mine to have counted for anything. And I touch. I wonder if I forget to breathe as we kiss because every time we part, and she flashes me that little nervous grin, I feel my heart pound over itself.

Perhaps this is what it is to truly love. To adore so fully. I am unsure what to do with such fidelity, such sweetness warning me in the cold of winter rather than cloying and clotting in my throat.

I wear her sweater hours after she’s gone, and the warmth of it- whatever the perfume is noted in- steeps my hurt evermore.

She smells vaguely of memory. Of something soothing and all together striking. Laughs like a best friend I once forced myself to think more of. Looks like my favourite actress. Talks like her favourite. Is the culmination of all I’ve ever wanted and so much more, because she was not made for me, but made alongside. Colliding and fusing and fissing at once.

How lucky I, to exist in a time where I would allow someone to fully devastate me.