When I Try To Define You, And Us

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I’m having trouble fitting you into words. Ironic, given my chosen hobby. What I mean is, my head is hitting against these keys instead of fingers because for the first time I can’t make my words flow as effortlessly as we do. Wondering how can I try to mimic with flat definitions and weak metaphors what was so natural I didn’t even notice the way you snuck in, became a habit. Or rather, something more involuntary. Like waking up at the same time every day without an alarm – you became a rhythm. Somewhere between texts from you every morning continuing the conversation from last night to absolute trust of your word, you’ve woven a beat into my life.

Now, I’m scrambling to unravel all the ways you’ve tilted my world about its axis. Unsure if I know how to right its course, or if I even want to. Endless verbs, adjectives, adverbs, articles, interjections, prepositions, conjunctions, and nouns all at my disposal and somehow I’m still grasping. When I think of you, of your meteoric streak across my life, words trail as jumbled debris in your wake. Synonyms layered with experiences rain down, and with each more grandiose version my thesaurus mind tinkers towards perfectionism. Definitions sear into closed eyelids and fade as you swim into focus under them all.

Because you’re simply just there now – wedged deeper than I care to admit. Definitions and impressions orbiting like,

Direct:

  1. (v). moving from one place to another by the shortest way without changing direction or stopping.
  2. your path to me. In the midst of that middle aged crowd passively nodding their heads to some Brit in glitter singing about moving on. When you turned to me with that casual surety. The first time that, you would close the gap between us without changing direction or stopping [direct]. The chorus crashing around us – ‘KISS THIS’. I couldn’t have written a more cliché beginning, and yet, I loved it.

Can’t you see? I am trying so hard to be an architect. Designs for a sturdy structure binding words together to describe what’s been undone bit by bit with each kiss.

I want to plagiarize the way words flow between us and pour them as easily all over this page. But flowery attempts spoil into poeticism because everything about how you landed in my life was abrupt, unexpected.

Unexpected:

  1. (adj). not expected or regarded as likely to happen.
  2. you punched your way through my walls with each candid remark only, while I was doubled over trying to catch my breath, you effortlessly flowed in instead of air. There’s no pretty way to paint this strangely sweet sensation of being peeled to the core. You are an unexpected visitor knocking down the door.

There’s really only one word that seeps through and saturates every moment I get of you.

Effortless:

  1. (adj). showing or needing little or no effort: appearing very easy.
  2. discovering that our message thread escaped my regular deletion purges, because it never grew stale, never turned into something I wanted to do without. You never turned into something I wanted to do without.
  3. reflexively thinking I’ll need space and finding myself well into the early hours of the next day talking to you – gravity in flux has never felt so natural.
  4. The only definition I didn’t have to search. Because it’s already there, in every dad joke disguised as flirtation, every laugh, every bad karma moment and absent-minded kiss. effortless.

Gratitude:

  1. (n). the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.
    • Use it in a sentence: gratitude bloomed when I let myself realize how much I like just existing, effortlessly, in a world where I know you.