On being his

Inspired by the quiet, devotional notes of Shyam (Nocturnereads), whose work reminds me that intimacy can live in fragments, in reverie, and in the unsaid.

He tastes like something I can’t quite put my finger on, something that’s just barely in my memory. Like the dissolution of honey in heated tea. Like the first taste of something very rich and sweet that you know you’ll regret because you’ll want more. I swear, when he kisses me, I can feel his slow golden touch softening everything it comes into contact with. I wonder if he is aware of the harm he causes me. If he knows how easily I can be undone, how I unravel at the seams to accommodate him. 

Everywhere he goes, he leaves his mark. On my skin. In my mind. Between my ribs, in the calm places. Warmth lingers like the final note of a song you don’t want to stop, and I wake up with the ghost of his hand still resting on my arm. The world reorganizes itself around him as I inhale him, as if everything has silently decided to revolve around him. I believe I dream in the hue of his voice on certain mornings. 

He tells me to stop staring at him in that manner. As though I could prevent it. As if he weren’t the kind of storm that settles in a June night and hums with power. When he grins, my chest feels like the tides are pushing, and something old is reacting. I want to see him in all of his incarnations. He was a boy before me. The man he has become. The one he continues to develop into. I want to get to know him in the same manner as the water knows the shore—that is, without end or urgency.

He shakes his head and half-laughs, saying, “You act like I’m something divine.”

He doesn’t believe me when I assure him, “You are.”

When I say, “I could die happy just watching him exist,” he labels me theatrical. I make an effort to clarify that it is observation, not hyperbole. It’s like witnessing flames when you watch him. Gorgeous. Risky. Impossible to overlook. Even though I know I might burn, my hands hurt to reach for him. I would, too. I would gladly burn.

There are moments when he looks at me as if he’s trying to understand me, as if I’m a question he’s only halfway through answering. 

He says, “You’re mine.”

Ownership doesn’t feel like it. It has a sense of security. Similar to reality. Like something that was waiting for words all the time. 

I've never felt more a part of anything than I do with him. Furthermore, I don't want to surpass it.

He uses his thumb to draw absent circles on my wrist, as if he were writing something that only my bones could read. I wonder if they do—whether my body knows his name without my lips having to learn it. Just being close to him makes my blood run warmer.

He has completely rewired the world for me, but he is unaware of it. How the jagged edges soften. How the intolerable turns into something I can handle without tearing myself apart. He is not a remedy. He is not redemption. There is something more genuine about him. He is the silent reassurance that I'm not lost.

And I am his.

I could be nothing better.

It's not about possession in this love. Being called something tiny or brittle isn't the point. It's the way he pronounces my name, as if it were a perfect fit for his tongue. He settles into me as if I'm in a secure place. He looks at me as if I'm not ephemeral and won't be carried away by the wind.

When he holds my hand, he asks me why I smile. Why, when he tells me he loves me, I shake my head as if it were a commonplace statement.

I tell him, "I don't think you understand."

He waits.

"I don't think you know what it means to be loved by you."

He chuckles quietly, as if I'm being absurd once more. As if he weren't the sun subtly shifting my whole globe. As if his love weren't a precious treasure that, if I could, I would chisel into the sky.

He doesn't have to comprehend, though. It is enough that he is here. That he is mine. That I am his.

I no longer know where I end and he begins, how deeply he has pressed himself into me. My body aches as if it has been emptied and replenished with something intolerable and sweet, and I wake up savoring his name. There might be a version of myself that hasn't been affected by him somewhere, but I don't want to find her.

The way he has touched me has shaped every aspect of who I am. To love him is to be unmade, not to hold something fragile, to allow myself to fall apart, to reveal to him the pieces of me that I typically keep hidden.

He notices me. And it has devastated me.

He notices me. I am also complete.

This love lacks both kindness and a neat sense of security. I voluntarily entered this fire. I have an unapologetic hunger. I don't adore him with caution. I adore him in a way that makes an impression. Like a scar that I repeatedly touch to relive the sensation.

He doesn’t flinch from me. He doesn’t turn away when I am messy with wanting, when I am jagged and trembling. He only holds me closer, like he’s afraid I might disappear. Like he already knows what it costs to keep someone.

Sometimes I wonder if he understands the weight of it. That I would split myself open just to prove he lives inside me. That I have never believed in anything the way I believe in the sound of his breathing beside me. In the way he says my name, like it is the truest thing he knows.

He is written into my body now. In my blood. In my bones. Curled between my ribs like something sacred.

He is the softness I never knew I could ask for.

He is the hunger I will never try to outrun.

I am his.

And I could be nothing better.