Contrast
When he lays down with me, it is as if my flesh lightens, I become milk spilled against the shaded tan of his nutshell skin, we are so distinct. I feel drawn to our differences, how his muscles are shaped dissimilar from mine. The softness of my body, the taut, fragile corners of his. Sometimes I will wake when he sleeps and simply admire him, this curious and perpetually buoyant creature with the temerity to fall in love.
We are so full of possibility, I can see it like maps on the inside of my eyes.
Disparity
He is slow to reply when we are sad, our bodies curled heavily together, depressed letters thrown to the bed in a mess. I do not react well to silence, not while asleep at night, not when we speak. His pause, the length of fifteen breaths, disrupts my communication, sends me casting nets, discarding what I started with, trawling the ocean of our alphabet for a topic, any topic, that will be worthy of response, anything to delay my please talk to me.
Somewhere in the gaps when he’s not speaking, there must be something to say.