you’re asleep by my side, the breath we share in this small bedroom somehow feels more intimate than all the years before. “I want you to be my person,” you said last night.

words with deep-ache weight; I wonder how many of us have access to that kind of burden.

you’re asleep by my side and might be dreaming: fuzzy pictures, flickering neuron dances.

are you dreaming of the time you perched on the stoop of my Fremont Ave apartment with flowers in hand, a tie already-loosened against your chest, an ocean in your eyes with every vast drop of possibility afloat? Remember: I had swum in them.

maybe you’re dreaming about the time our world was on fire and I sat with you in the kitchen, my arms containing the swell of storm within you; we both knew it wasn’t enough.

perhaps you’re watching the shoreline, the one belonging to the night we slept on the mattress, dragging it to the living room. we left the balcony door ajar just to hear the Atlantic’s cymbals as we drifted off. sand mites got into the sheets.

now our breath collides, tides coming to shore.

I listen to your rhythm and wonder, can you be my person, too?