10 Things I Hate About You

1. The sonic magnetism of your voice.  It’s a drumbeat. It moves me. I am mesmerized by the syncopation as it pulls me toward you. When I am within range of its warm depth, there is nothing I can do to escape; my electrons betray me every time.

2. How you can remain so ferociously calm in the face of a storm—meteorological, emotional, or otherwise.

3. Your dance moves and how, really, they are all anyone needs to see to truly understand you.  You somatically conjure. That you can physically render your essence on command, that you have simultaneously that much and that little control.

4. That you smell like a religion to which I want to succumb.

5. The way you mix a drink.  It’s scientific, devoid of pretense, and contagious with anticipation.

6. That your wit is a blade, but your ethics a scalpel. You could cut straight to the bone, but you almost never do. You wield, with gracious restraint, the ability to set a fire and put it out with your words. I’m about five or six more perfect reads away from solving the mystery of whether I admire your brain and tongue more for their flash or their substance.

7. The length of your eyelashes.

8. That you can sleep, and have slept, almost anywhere—because for you sleep is both a vice and a necessity. Since I’ve met you, you’ve slept on over a hundred flights, through rounds of gunfire, and next to me.  I shelter in your unconscious rhythms. I’ll never know how someone so adventurous and clumsy manifests such stillness and security. Your tidal drowsy breaths are still one of the prettiest poems.

9.  That I love you.

10. That you’re leaving.