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People in Love

I think I'm in love with him?


Sometimes he plays the piano like he's trying to solve a puzzle, and sometimes he plays like he's seen a rare butterfly for the first time and he's loved them all his life. The faint tinkling in his melodies, right at the end before they pick up a pace, reminds me of our conversations at night, with us in each others arms. It echoes the longing we feel despite holding each other close.


He smiles whenever he plays that now, with an ease that is buttery. I watch him caress the keys on some notes like he touches my lips, our secret language, our bodies instruments. Sometimes a lock of his hair falls across his forehead, and it glimmers in the light, threads of gold in brown. The corner of his mouth lifting playfully, like he's thinking about me too, and my heart melts into blood every time he does. If his smiles are big enough, sometimes the crinkles near his eyes kiss his hair. My prince of golden delight and monochrome keys.


Sometimes when he cannot sleep at night and gets up to play, in his sleep crumpled shorts, with the slight curve of his back--I marvel at this softer, sleep mused part of him only I get to see. So when I see him with people, playing in the spotlight, with a suit as pristine as fresh flowers, I smile. His eyes shine a different hue in different lights. The yellow light of the café he plays in on the weekends makes his eyes shine more grey than green. Oh I can tell, because I've stared into those eyes for hours, watch them smile, cry and laugh. I can tell because I've stared into those eyes under all kinds of light--celestial, neon, electric.


But most of all the smiles he smiles, my favourite is when he's so completely lost in the music, in caressing the keys with a tenderness that is as delicate as a new sprouting leaf. I cannot help but mirror my own smile when I see it. It takes up my whole face, that smile I return him even when he's not looking up at me, but I know he will when he finishes playing. My entire body warms up in realisation.

That smile I would step on hard rocks barefoot for... For that laugh that comes so deeply from him, when I do my impression of a T-rex.


His happiness is sunshine for me, and I've been in the dark for years. His lips precious daisy petals I cannot help kissing and touching.


I love how he manages to find the prettiest rings for me, with ladybirds carved on them and creative ones that are bejewelled with art.


Is it wrong? To feel so much for one person, to love in so complete a way, the word love itself feels incomparable. I could tear myself open and fill the sea with this love. My love a paint so deep it could turn all the seas in the world red.

No dances with him were ever enough, no laughs ever too loud, no tears ever less painful, no kiss unwelcome--they were my unbecoming.


I am in love with him.


I wonder if he loves me?



I love her


I can never get enough of the softness of her eyes, the tenderness in her gaze when I catch her looking at me. Their coffee-chocolate endlessness is a wonder. The smile that melts all over her then is more precious to me than an oasis--and I've been parched in a desert for days. Her happy sighs when I play and she likes some part of it a little more. The simple sighs she saves for when she's in my arms, and I can tell she's tired, but happy. She's water and I'm the tumbler, and we've needed each other all this time--She is everywhere.


I melt into my body when I know she cannot get enough of me, and I cannot help touch her, make sure she's real, make sure she touches me too, she loves me too. How she always tucks the little lock of hair that falls on my forehead, and now I can never cut it, I make sure it's always there for her to push back.


I've felt peace every time she's leaned further into me whenever we've dance. I cannot stop my smiles when she pats the bed at night until she catches my body and pulls me closer. I drift a little further every night, just to have her want me every night. My love for her bursts from me every day, it is too much.

I know her love too, when she puts extra pickle on my plate because I love it. I know she adores me when she wakes up and gives me extra sleepy kisses, kisses that feel like soft evening light on my face. I love how she feels my waist before moving her hands to my chest, then my neck, and then into my hair. She's left no part of me untouched, body and soul.


I love how she kisses me in ways that undo my mind and body, kisses that are storms that dissolve me. Kisses so thorough they melt memories in my bones. Her sleepy cuddles when she falls asleep on me, even though she promises to watch the film this time, make me bubble with happiness. How she pulls my hair sometimes with love, sometimes with that mischievous twinkle in her eyes--the dance of control.


Her little dances every time I surprise her with dumplings make me double up with joy. Her kisses afterwards as consuming as a black hole. I love how she would cry every time she watched 'Marley and Me' and then I'd have to kiss her deeper and harder to make her understand I'd love her to the point of oblivion and beyond that--even after we'd become dust from stars.

She is the moon. I can never get enough of her humming melodies in the kitchen, melodies I then decorate and immortalise on the piano.


I knew I loved her when she got me plants to apologise after our first fight. A convenient reminder of us. I knew I loved her when she'd always find excuses to buy scarves for me because I mentioned I love wearing them once on our second date.


I can never get enough of the surprised face she makes, her lips falling into the perfect 'o', every time I give her the kind of vintage rings she likes from all over the world when I tour.


Our love feels too much and never enough at the same time.

I could never get enough of her smiles, of her laugh after a fart, or better still her laugh after I rip a nasty one. I adore her choicest swearwords that are too randomly placed together to ever make sense--of using her least favourite vegetables as swearwords.


I'd figured I'd love her, soon after I knew her... But now I know, I love her like I've never loved before, like I'd never really known love before her, and she's changed its meaning for me in permanent ways.


I'm in love with her.


I have been, for what seems like yesterday, and I will be, for what is going to be tomorrow.



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