My Love

I don’t want my love to be an idea that I think of from far away
I want it to be something I breathe in with the smell of your hair
I want to mindlessly reach back behind my carseat and feel your hand
Supple and always warm, like all the rest of your body
And not even think of it or think of how much I love you
I want to wake up from a dream where I kissed you and realized 
My love for you a thousand times across a thousand lifetimes
And find your warm face asleep before me
And smile and love you a thousand and one times
Can I not just hold onto your body for as long as my arms last?
Might I look up at you after you’ve put your shoes on?
There is a soft, enduring gentleness to your breath and your kiss
That softens my body and my soul
It’s a gentle love
The kind that you feel bleeding through the thread of your seams
I’ll always smile at you when you’re not looking
I want to love you in millions of in-passing, forgettable moments 
Little things that go unnoticed and unrecorded,
Taking them for granted as they happen
A bitter kind of love
Because if I have to miss you every day and traverse through this life
Suffering at the cruelest hands of my heart, I cannot help
Than love so deeply
There’s a room inside me that will always be yours to keep
Leave your wallpaper on the walls
This feeling is bigger than my body, I can feel it humming outside of me
Like the borders of me can’t quite hold it there
It runs to a deeper place than I can find with my mortal fingers
My soul finds itself beside yours, intertwined
To endure times my body will never see
The way one wave crashes after the next, on into whatever eternity I can comprehend 
My love is as inevitable as tomorrow


                                                                                                                                            E. Falter 2/17/25