I never know how to start these things so I guess I will just START. I don’t know how we started, my high strung preoccupied adolescent memory fails me. I am only rewarded with pieces, crumbs falling on your lap when you eat bagels you had such a lovely reading voice and a face peppered with freckles and I made a list of pros and cons and even though the cons list was longer I found myself milling through a bookstore with you sipping coffee and comparing lives that had never crossed paths up until that moment. You said you would see Mary Poppins with me and even though we never did I kissed you anyways my quivering heart preventing me from absorbing the moment, how you tasted how you smelled but I’m sure it would be similar to the way you taste and smell now. Gouda, mozzarella, brie you said your parents met in a cheese store mine over burgers but we met over Hamlet, Catcher in the Rye my two favourite pieces of literature not because of you but because they are beautiful and make me laugh. You are beautiful and you make me laugh. I was thinking of ways that I could tell you that, a way that would make me sound sophisticated and artistic but what’s the point of having to deconstruct something when you can just simply say what it is. I feel like you would disagree with this. You disagree with a lot of things I say and sometimes I think I could go the rest of my life disagreeing and making love and laughing at your not so funny jokes and your funny jokes and you just being you which makes me laugh and if we had met over Ricotta or French fries or Oscar Wilde I’m sure we would have laughed all the same so how about we just meet in the middle? In the middle. The stalemate. You wouldn’t follow me wherever I go and all at once it seemed reasonable and so, so unfair I was falling asleep when your hand slipped out of mine No! No! Never let me go. Your tears were hot against my hand and I wondered what was coiled inside of you what burned inside of you to make you have tears such as those. Scrunchies, new sweaters, stalemate promises packed into my suitcase overlooking the city This Is It nights where I put on my lipstick and you still cried those hot tears. Summer ended, my t-shirt stuck to my back and I thought of nothing while unfamiliar lips proceeded down my neck I thought of nothing when it poured rain I thought of nothing dancing in my new dress until our song came on the radio and suddenly I had a lot to think about suddenly your face your voice and you had new sweaters and new glasses and new stories but an old heart that ached for sidewalk sandwiches and cold toes and unfinished chess games suddenly you were walking towards me and I was running, I was running towards you suddenly there were hands intertwined underneath the table bodies intertwined underneath the sheets “Never doubt I love!” that scar on your arm the blush in my cheeks let me curl myself inside you and never, ever unwind. I see you looking I feel you looking we dance to an old record player dust particles like little sylphs fluttering around us in the afternoon sun. We dance in ties and elegant dresses we dance in front of the July moon we dance we dance. We wake up some mornings and eat like kings muffins and eggs and frin-fran you wake slowly and I kiss your cheek I kiss your eyelids I kiss every part of your heated flesh you carry me on your back to the car in my groggy voice I love you. I am your confidant, your plaything, your sun, your stars in a long nightgown telling you stories and superstitions and mixing the brownies too slowly our eyes catch each other across every room your hands creep towards mine everything in the world is moving and still and broken and perfect and I never know how to end these things so I guess I will just END.