Sometimes, when I run my fingers through your hair, it feels like smoke. Soft, simple, dark, with handfuls that slide away as you turn toward me. You look at me and let me run my hands under your head and shoulders and lift your hair to waterfall it over the pillow.
Tonight, we lie side by side. I say something now and then, but now that we look at each other, you seem to find it even harder to talk. When you do say something, your voice is low, like the whole world is breathing around us and you know you might wake it. Every word sounds like a question. I put my fingertips against the heartbeat at your jaw, then the lift of your cheek. I very, very lightly brush along your eyelashes. You close your eyes and let me do anything. I try to let you know the answer’s yes.
Sometimes, we spend our time trying to surprise each other; sometimes we copy every movement; and sometimes we move at the same time without thinking. When you close your eyes and reach for my face, your fingers seem to know where I am. When my eyes are closed, my hands can always find you.
And your face has a perfect copy behind my eyes. And in my fingers. And I know the shape of your lips at the back of my neck, and with the soft part of my wrist. So that whenever your lips go darker, or your pupils go big like a moon expanding each night, I can see the difference right away. Seeing your face for the first time each day makes my body take a deep breath. And if you’re feeling something new, or are scared, or sad, or filled with the light, shaky happiness that seems to make you more nervous than anything else, I can feel it in your breath, or pressing gently over your heart. I can even taste it sometimes when I kiss you, like metal in the lining of your cheek. And you adjust to everything I do so fast, I know it’s the same for you.
How is it, Santana, that I’m with the only girl in the world who curves around me, like smoke, that close? Like our shapes go together?
