Blank Space

There’s a scar right beneath his left eye, and that’s where my eyes always land first.
It’s because I’m always examining him for scars, for clues, for stories about his life that happen to be written on his face.
It’s because we’re always so close, barely more than a foot is ever between us.
In the newest, earliest stages of a relationship, isn’t that how it goes?
You’re so eager for the other person, that even when they’re sitting right next to you, it feels incredibly far.
Too far.
Come closer, always.

I’m looking for these things because I’m learning him, feeling out his history, every time we kiss and every time we touch.
It’s easy to find these things out with whispered questions and conversations over drinks and dinner, but I like it just the same when he reveals it to me without words.
I go looking for it myself, seeking out all the stories and feelings that are hidden in his body.
His eyes are always searching mine, like he’s looking as far into me as he can, searching and searching in the hours we spend all tangled up.
He’s figuring me out, maybe.
The intensity of that light brown gaze is more intimate than anything else.
It’s so much more intimate than sex, which is just a rearranging of parts that don’t even require feeling; I’ve spent plenty of nights with boys that way.
Not one of them has ever really looked at me like this, and it’s a little scary to be so closely scrutinized.
His eyes are steady, calm, and clear.
He probably doesn’t know that everything he’s thinking is reflected in them.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m feeling things solely to write about them later; if I’m thinking too hard about what’s happening and how I can shape it with words.
I do this all the time, and it becomes hard for me to get out of my own head.
Because when you’re falling for me, or when I’m feeling any sort of emotion for you, it’s going to end up in words.
That’s just what I do; that’s just the way I am.
I don’t feel anything that I don’t use somehow in my writing, and sometimes I don’t even notice I’m absorbing everything until it comes out of my hands and onto the page.

But what I do know is when I woke up this morning, everything was different.
I’m a notoriously fitful sleeper, waking with every creek and footstep.
I’m still adjusting to a new body in bed.
I have to shift my sleep patterns to accommodate someone else, as easy as he might be.
Although that’s the thing- I woke up this morning and everything felt easy, natural.
I woke up with an arm around me, pulling me close.
I woke up to forehead and shoulder kisses.
I opened my eyes, glanced across the sheets, and his were already open, looking at my messy sleep face like I was Christmas morning.
It was blessedly simply.

I don’t know what he’s looking to find in me, not yet.
I don’t know what he’s searching for in my eyes in those intense moments of silence.
But I’m looking forward to figuring it out.