I Love You (Almost)

I love the way you smile with the entirety of your mouth, like there’s just too much passion to be simply contained within your lips—the warmth needs to spread to your cheeks, to your eyes, to the wrinkles at the corner of your temples that I kiss with such tenderness they almost ache.

When you smile, I trace back through the years I haven’t known you, the moments I didn’t have the chance to intertwine your fingers with mine, or put my arms around your middle, pulling you closer to me. When you smile, I relive all the times we’ve shared together, like a filmstrip, looping so quickly it’s all a beautiful blur.

I love the way you laugh and how the sound bursts forward from your chest unconsciously. How the vibration itself takes on its own musical quality—a rhythm, a song I find myself humming to, swaying my hips to. Every time you laugh it surprises me, a warmth building in and around my own heart as if we are already intrinsically tied. And then, so easily, we dance.

I love the softness of your hands, and yet the roughness of their surface—such juxtaposition that entrances me with every touch. The callouses, the blisters. The smoothness of your palms against mine. The warmth we share, transferring energy patiently, deliberately. The embraces, both accidental and intentional, changing separate skins to connected souls.

I love the way you walk, and how, with every single step you are never just thinking of yourself. But of the people around you, the ones you love, the strangers, and even me. Somehow, in all the ways you’ve constructed and rebuilt your life—there I am. I fit. And we begin to walk—hand in hand, step for step—carving our own path.

I love what you say in our silence. When there are no words to be shared between kisses. When our eyes are closed and my arm is draped across your chest. When you hold me in your arms as if to protect me. When there really is nothing to say, but to breathe together in harmony. Your smile, your lips on mine, our cheeks and noses and fingertips touching—speak comfort to my every cell.

I love the little things about you. How you lean across the table when you tell me a story, how you listen with your eyes, how you speak with such energy when sharing anything you’re excited about, how you choose me, without trying to. How I so easily, unquestioningly, choose you right back.

I love what makes you, you.
I love who you are and have the potential to be.

I love you. (Almost).