Tactile

my lover, my only lover, the only lover I have and need and want and kiss and smile for and love

Hands me a warm cup of tea, full to the top of heavy cream and no sugar as our hands touch against the hot mug and I let them linger, our faces close and I feel my heart hum a straight line like a train leaving a station, going to meet my darling, to pick him up and take him to our paradise. My love has us watch silly movies like Tommy Boy, we cuddle and his hands wrap around my thigh as he pulls me into the crevices of his body, the spaces that I close up as we become one— and I watch as he cracks up almost in tears from laughing so hard at the silliness of the antics of the road trip comedy, the vibration of his laughter tickling my skin like something more intimate than a kiss

I drink him in and he tastes like rich chicken soup, as though the taste would cure the worst cold,

Or, the worst nightmare

Whichever is first.

When we kiss, I always get the whiff of something

Deeply woodsy

Or freshly cut grass

His smell reminds me of hard boiled masculinity yet of a sudden softness

Like when he gets all gentle

And I ask Edward, shaking so badly as though I was a flower aware of a bee about to gather it’s nectar hungrily, “how can I become a part of someone when I am so split apart and cracked?”

I can’t remember things, sometimes even my own name or my mom’s name or anything about my life—-

I keep going on and on, until he holds me so tight I shut my eyes and slowly breathe in, and a million times I feel that tactile sense of coming back to reality.

Edward does this for me, as he was the one who helped me feel again.

“Because..” he starts to whisper, his golden gray eyes searching mine, a wispy cloud it feels like, so soft and gentle, his hands holding my face.

“You feel this. Don’t you? You’re real and honest and true. And we’re —-

The words don’t stop as he collides with me,

A tactile response of blended memory, guided mewled sounds, fresh ingredients of squeezed out baked goods that we pressed and created by hand, a sweet and sour and dreamy indescribable aroma of something old we churned out into

A brand new us,

A fluttery flute of drinkable nectar that gave us a new emotion filled colors

We painted,

And filled the cracks with.