The vast expansive midnight sky stares back at us as we look up at the stars, glittering like small, perfect gems studded into the flawless indigo breadth. We lay in the plush grass, the clean, earthy scent enveloping the still, balmy air in its enticing fragrance. Tall pines surround us in our little clearing, shielding us from the rest of the world. All is silent, save for our easy breathing and crickets’ songs; the sounds of our footsteps and our happy laughter dissolved in the sunset hours ago. Now all that is heard is the distinctly tranquil rhythm of the night.

I bite my lip as I turn to look at you, the glittering, silvery moonlight illuminating your smooth skin, tanned from the day’s hot sun and glistening with a light sheen of sweet summer sweat. A sudden light breeze ruffles your dark hair, and you inhale deeply, your chest moving up and down with the motion, as if to consume the atmosphere, to intake the whole of the night. I see the reflection of the heavens in your crystal-blue eyes, and I want to know what you’re really seeing, what you’re really thinking. But to spoil the serenity of this one moment, this one instance of complete and utter rightness, I cannot bring myself. So I turn back, and breathe in too.

Is it silly that, as much as I see your face, (which, incidentally, I try my hardest to see more than my own) you always seem to slip away in my mind? You’re like a skipping rock to me, floating away at the end of its trail into a lake, and smoothly sinking down into the unknown abysses of the depths below. It makes me crazy, the way you can be sometimes. And yet I love you still.

The sun will rise soon, and you tell me this, your compelling voice filling the air. In a few short hours, the day will begin and we will be forced apart by what is expected of us. In a few days, we may have forgotten about this night. In a few years, will we even remember each other?
You tilt over and kiss me softly on my forehead, and while I don’t know how to answer these questions, I am thankful that I do know that we have each other and this moment.