what i want

I want your arms wrapped around me as we waste the day away. Tangled up in silk bedsheets, in each other, with the sunlight saying hello through the blinds that dance in the wind. I want your hands on my hair, twirling it gently, your fingers dancing down my back, spelling out soft “i love you”s. Your eyes, big and brown, glimmering, as they always do, staring straight into mine, speaking with no words at all.

I want to exchange a cigarette back and forth with you on our balcony. Each with a half-empty wine glass, watching people scour the streets, the lights shining above them and below us. I want to hear your laugh fill up the quiet night, I want to dance in it. I want you to take my hand in yours and twirl me under the night sky, to dip me down low, until every building around us is flipped upside down and I am a little closer to the stars.

Despite our upbringings and contrary to our usual tidiness, cooking between us turns our kitchen into a canvas of abstract expressionism. You wash my hair after a long day and I comb through yours, soap suds over every counter.

I hear a camera shutter on the metro and I think of you. On those days I make it home a little quicker.

I want to walk down the beach with you, have you pick me up over your shoulders and take me with you beneath the blue. I don’t care that my dress is soaked and you don’t mind that I pretend to.

Sat on our green couch, we read. We don’t read the same books but you’ll listen to me tell you about each one, and I’ll hear your every review. You brew me coffee, I don’t know how you make it so well, you say, “With love.”

I want you to keep tying my shoes for me and holding my purse. I want you to open every door for me like you did my heart.

I want to make it to our favorite restaurant, your tie matching my dress, and lose track of time. You order the burrata first, you know me so well. We share a different plate each time and pick a new wine to critique. Like we know what we're talking about.

I want to share my latest piece with you, to hear your sweet words despite how much I urge you to offer me advice. I want to hold your heart in my hands until I’m six feet deep and you’re right beside me.

In sickness and in health, I want your dusk and dawns, my lipstick repeatedly painting your face, your shirts forever on my side of the closet, I want.