I never slept with pillows, hated the damn things. Always in the way when I wanted to stretch my arms out in recognizance of how I never needed anything to allay an ache.

And now I can’t lie in my own bed, can’t touch the pillow there because it smells like you. It smells like you and it makes my head spin. Oh, but what a miraculous event to see you sleep: the curl of your eyelashes kissing your cheeks soft, the imprint your lips will leave on my life, the breath you take that fills my lungs with air.

I go to bed at night on the couch, pillows everywhere.

Pablo Neruda couldn’t write about the galaxies brushed by some holy hand on your back.
Jack Daniels won’t fill the wormhole where my heart rests in your costal arch.
It’s 3:55am, and I’ve got Texas on my mind, the space between your collarbone and your neck smells like the home I never had.

The guitar next to my desk is begging me to write again, knows a muse in life like you is a mermaid in the ocean.
Its neck doesn’t compare.
Its weight feels incomplete.

“You’re an angel,” you whispered one morning, l’heure bleue creeping through the window, voice crackled with sleep; but you’ve never seen yourself against the backdrop of the coming day or the glow of a setting sun, and the birds embrace any silence you hear because there’s a tongue resting heavy in my mouth and I can’t command it to move. Instead I kiss you and a disbelieving laugh escapes from the back of my throat, Psaias’ strings taunting me from where she leans against the wall.

J Alfred Prufrock. Love songs. Do I dare eat a peach, he says.
And I won’t die soon but I’ll declare the love I have so give me your hand to run alongside the wind that’ll cast us into Bedouin life before skyscrapers reel us in again.
I want 12, she says. Mia regina, you’ll find the moon wrapped for your birthday present if you want that too.

The wait for you is excruciating – I sit, contemplate how is it that seeing you walk my way cleans the dusty edges on my hands so that when they find yours, they’re worthy of holding.

You asked me once why I loved your hands, the secrets they hold.
Exertion, anguish. Sensuality, bliss.
Corazón, yo no te dije, por que lo que tienes en tus manos es mi alma enredada al raz de tus dedos.

But there aren’t yet words invented in any of the languages we speak to capture the colors I keep finding in your heart. They called me cunning, creative, charismatic. It all seems void in the face and shades of the wit, wonder, warmth that keep you wandering the world. (Wordsmith, wordsmith, wordsmith. You should be writing this, not me.) This rainbow, this spectrum framed, collocating with daisies and a wedding, two flowers melded into one harmony. Please take me with you when you paint the planet.