Helix

The clouds of your breath decorate the windows in my mind, fractals etched on frozen panes smothered with foggy confusion. Your lifeline is painted on the glass and I recognize outlines of stories along its blurry path. This is my defense, averting my eyes from lines too sharp for fear of seeing too clearly. My finger lingers near your line and draws my own, a helix of intersections and missed chances cutting through the haze.

this moment

I am in love with this moment, and my head turns in the widest angle possible to absorb the beauty surrounding me in this small white room. The plastic ceiling and half-open blinds reflect love in blinding fashion; there is a muted-grey sun crawling toward our feet as you place your head on my chest and exhale. My head oscillates left and right, charting the front door’s poorly polished golden handle and following a line to the lamp standing at attention, the empty wine glasses next to the chair you claimed when we ate breakfast on that first morning, the lonely clock muttering the ticks of time to itself as it hangs above the limp sleeves of an empty jacket clinging to its resting place. My head turns and takes in the speaker humming under strings of year-round Christmas lights that outline the calm chaos above our bodies, huddled together in warmth on the couch. My eyes reach the edge of the room as the other side of that same muted sun strains to touch the mementos lined up on the side of the couch, a holy trinity of items at equal distance from each other, sacred symbols of the space between our bodies. I realize you are watching me from the chest you claimed, and your mouth remains pressed to my shirt while your eyes twist upward in loving silence until a smile lifts you to my lips. I am in love with this moment, as you place your head on my chest, and I inhale.