I want you to kiss me like I might float away. I want your hands and lips to be the only things keeping me on the ground, keeping me level. I want you to kiss me like you mean it, like you mean me. Like I matter in some way. I want this to matter, to mean something.
I miss pouring my heart out late at night and trapping it in a little bowl. Hands intertwined, we'd cut into it together. Not out of malice, but out of love. We take things apart so we can put them back together. So you can sign your name in the stitches and we'll forever know which parts of my heart are yours. I love you and I want you to see it. I want to bare myself so completely that you can know without a doubt now and forever.
I want you to know that when I kiss you, I mean it.
We're floating away, the two of us. We're drifting high above the clouds, high above the world itself. I'm scared of heights, you know. I get dizzy when I see the ground far below me and my legs become unsteady and my teeth chatter. It gets harder and harder to think about anything but the fall. Sitting in treetops and swinging our legs, we laugh and laugh and I pretend that I don't want to cry. I pretend that I don't love you because maybe it's easier not to.
Maybe you make me feel like I'm floating away from myself, drifting downstream in a river and I'm scared of it. I'm scared of leaving my body so slowly that I don't notice it happening. I'm scared of the fall.
They like to say that you simply should never look down and I think that has to be nonsense. You can't avoid looking down because you have to see where you're putting your feet, especially when the rope is tight beneath them. You have to match each step to the gentle swaying and ignore the rushing water all those miles below. You can look down. You just can't think about down. You can't let it into your head, let it be a thing you can even comprehend. It doesn't enter your brain. Down isn't a real concept. There's just you in this moment.
Just one foot in front of the other. Just the motion. Lose yourself in the motion. Don't think about down. Don't think at all. One foot in front of the other. One more step. The rock is taut. It takes your weight. Your hands is in mine. Come on. Come on, love. Just one more step. Please? Just one more.
You make me feel like I'm floating away and I'm trying not to think about it. I'm not looking down and I'm not seeing the way the stones drop away around my feet. I'm not seeing how the world gives way, how the caverns open up and everything seems to stop. I'm not seeing how high we've climbed. I'm not looking down. I'm just looking into your beautiful eyes. I'm lost in them, lost in your soul.
Come on, bare my heart again. Let's see how much I love you. Let's see how afraid I am.
You can't be afraid of love. There's a piece of my heart marked for you and it shatters as the moment breaks. I dash myself into pieces against the landscape because one day you weren't there. One day you weren't there to kiss me. One day you weren't holding me up.
And it was no fault. We chose this path, as we always did. You can't think about the down, even as you're lying in it and sobbing into your pillow late at night.
I loved you. I still do. You made me feel like I was floating.