I think of now, how your body has become a comfortable haven

I was thinking today about the first times we met. About when I first saw you, a long-legged man wearing light summer pants and a cream cotton shirt with a Mandarin collar and a cowboy hat with a shock of black hair sticking out under it, sitting cross-legged in a chair in a Brooklyn garden. When we were strangers to each other — and I was aware of every inch of space between us and my whole body electrified the first time you placed your hand on my bare thigh. Our first kiss at the end of our first long beautiful day, how I stood on my tiptoes (do I still do that? I think I must but I do not think of it) and you leaned down and your lips were dry and it ended too soon and it sparked so much.

And I think of now, how your body has become a comfortable haven, your company a steady light. I think of how easily we now cross the distance of inches, or miles, between us, how casually we touch, yet how you can still run shivers through my body. How you grant me both comfort and strength, are my partner on couch nights and venturous journeys. I think of my gratitude at having you be familiar to me. My familiar — for we are animals, too, aren’t we?