Let Me List The Ways

I love your mind,
I love its probing, questioning nature -
The way it picks apart
At all the little details,
And the grammar, and the spellings.
I love our anal arguments
About what's pronounced how
And why, and what it means.

I loved you
From the minute we first talked.
I loved the way your eyes lit up
At the words, 'I don't" -
A response to your probey question,
About reconciling reason and faith -
And the fires that burned in them
As we spent an hour,
That seemed so much less,
Talking, just talking,
Oblivious to the world.

I love your heartfelt messages
And emails and letters,
That you send all of a sudden
And ambush me with,
Kidnapping my heart and soul,
And taking off
For an imagined tryst
In a faraway forested glade.

I love your stumbles
And how you try
To walk only on the cracks
While I try only between them
And we bumble along,
Arms linked,
Lovers lost in their own world.

I love your intrepid fingers,
And how they trace the lines,
The corns on my own,
And how they poke,
In almost tickle-inducing ways,
At my pockets,
When we go exploring
The countryside by bike.

I love how you're contrary,
Sometimes, just to be contrary
And arbitrary, just because
And stubborn, though you rarely are,
And then, suddenly yielding,
Like a southwest-sauced fingertip,
Because you feel like it.

I love how my mind feels
After conversations with you,
Like I've drunk a potion
And everything is clear,
Like wisdom checks don't matter,
So bonused am I.
I love how geeky that sounds,
And how true too
Of what you do to me.

I love that through your fears,
No matter how scared you are,
You turn to me with love.
And when I'm scared,
And the shadows creep long and nimble,
You hold me
And love me to bits
Till the morning comes.

I love the way our eyes meet
Across the table,
Even when we're trying,
As try we must
Or we don't manage,
To be sociable -
So we don't weave ourselves
Into the comfortable cocoon
Of our conversations,
Of our love,
To the exclusion of all else.

I love the stolen moments,
When stuck in a group,
And feeling so un-groupy -
When we'd get away,
If we only could,
But can't
And make do with what we can.

I love your naggy girlfriend mode,
Even back when things were 'unofficial',
And how you force me to sleep
Despite my worst protests.
I love the constant indignation
At my need to refine and refine
And refine some more -
The way you push me to finish my work
And publish it,
Instead of letting it languish -
Unread and unloved by you -
A lost child in limbo.

I love your lips,
When they part,
And your smile shines through,
When they press against my own,
And send me flying across the universe,
Awash upon a sea of you.
I love the way one kiss
Leads to just one more,
And then just one quick one,
And then some -
The way we have to try so hard
Just to pull apart.

I love the way my head swims,
In a way it never has,
When you do more than kiss me.

I love how eight hours,
Or six-and-a-half, or seven,
Can disappear so quickly
In a breeze,
Of shared food and kisses,
And both in combination.

I love how natural
It feels to lose myself in you,
How I feel almost subsumed,
And still myself,
How I feel more like myself
Than I've ever done before,
How the image of the me I want
Becomes more real every day.

I love the exquisite taste
Of you upon my tongue
And the way I drift off
Into a surreal, gooey trance
With your arms wrapped around me
And mine around you -
Our lips and hearts pressed together
Like facing pages
In the most beautiful story ever written.

I love how words,
Even the most beautiful yet,
Are just not equal,
And never could be,
To the beauty of this thing we have.
I love how every time
I think I ought to finish this,
One more line, then one more verse,
Pops into my head,
Full of love and memory.

I love that I spent so many words
And lines, and ways,
Just to say a simple thing:
I love you.