I’m Afraid Of Heights, But You Make Me Want To Jump

I’ve carried a rose quartz in my bra each time I’ve seen you. The day and night before, even leaving it out charging on my windowsill. My whole life I’ve been choking on them or losing them, but since I’ve kissed you, I’ve slept too often with this one underneath my pillow.

I dream about you.

You watch me dance underneath the moon with glittering eyes. I don’t know you’re there until you say my name and hearing it is like crushing up the stars, rolling them, and getting high. I don’t feel caught, I don’t feel invaded, I feel seen. I turn to look at you and there are fireflies so very still in the air around you. When I was little, I spent summers at my grandmother’s chasing them in her backyard, and I think this is the part of the dream that’s supposed to mean something. I run to you. Your hand is suddenly on the side of my face and the wishes I made throwing coins into fountains as a little girl come back to me. We’re somewhere else, and you’re watching me peel back the skin from a pomegranate in bed. You’re watching me sink my teeth into the seeds, watching the juice drip down my chin and on the white sheets. Everything is sticky and everything is red, but you don’t mind the mess.

You kiss me and every nerve inside my body braces itself.

That’s the way I always feel when I’m with you or think of you. Like bracing myself for the fall. Like bracing myself for the crash. I’m buzzing and rolling around in champagne clouds, and for a long time now, I’ve had an immense fear of heights. My pair of abandoned wings has found their way back to my shoulder blades. I’ve been here before. I don’t want them.

I’m thinking about you more than I’m comfortable with.

When days go by that I don’t see you, I think about your hand in mine, I miss you. Your hands are a place I’m not done visiting. Neither is your body. I want to learn its language, I want to become as familiar with it as I am with my native tongue.

I think about pushing you away, but then I think about how I just want to get away with you. I think about going somewhere you and I could be alone. Somewhere I could spend time exploring all the little universes you carry within you, let you spend yours making a painting of the ones inside me.

I’m so very afraid of heights, so very afraid of the view from here, but even more afraid of you because you make me want to jump.

Would you be down there waiting? Would you catch me? Could I land somewhere safe? Could I go with it without breaking any bones?

I want to know you. I want to know more.

As a writer, I pay attention to every little detail, stitch it to my brain’s surface to revisit when my hand is reunited with my pen. With you, I do the same. I catalog every move you make, the sound of your voice, what you say, the way your eyes look in the sun and under different lightings after dark, but with you, I do it simply because I don’t want to forget. I remember wanting to take a picture of you across from me that night so I could remember the way you looked at me so I could stick it between the pages in my journal or between those of my favorite book. So I could have it for keeps to look at before I fall asleep.

The truth is I think about you often when it’s late. I want to text you. I want to tell you to share another thing with me not many know about you. But I’m trying not lead the way with my heart, I’m trying to lead the way with my head. I’m trying to play it cool. I’m trying to be careful. I never knew something as soft as when you hold my hand could feel so dangerous.

It makes me want to run the other way. It makes me want to text you: “how about me and you go away and get lost somewhere for a few days?”

But I’m radio silent. It’s too high up here. I’m too afraid to open my eyes. I’m too afraid to look down.

I’m not reaching out to you, but I’m finding it very difficult not to. The truth is I’m thinking about endless whispered conversations, feeling your skin against my skin, drinking wine with you somewhere nobody knows my name, somewhere I can hear it escape your mouth over and over again.

I’m so very afraid of heights. But whatever this is, it feels like it could be a good thing. It feels like maybe, just maybe, I could risk the landing, like maybe I should make the jump.