Straight No Chaser

Mmm

i'm finally here and now it occurs to me that this is going to be impossible. how do you convey the essence of a person in words? answer: you don't. you capture it any other way you can, but words don't work.

cliches that come close: "he's my everything," "i love him," "he makes me whole," et cetera. all manner of absolute filth flarn filth.

he drives me crazy, in both the negative and the not-so senses. make me feel divine one minute and worthless the next. no one else has ever been able to do that; before him it was worthless, consistently.

i write him poems, something i never did before he turned me on to the idea of somehow capturing the complexities of beauty and ugliness through the structure of language, the one thing we both knew i could handle and maybe master. any poems that show up in my portfolio (with the exception of "frozen," an abomination from a writer's cramp two years ago) come via his inspiration.

he's gorgeous, this perfectly sculpted body wrapped in smooth cinnamon skin from head to toe, with tons of little thrills along the way. perfect eyelashes, perfect stomach, perfect size, perfect...just about everything. (more cliches! but how can i help it?) when we're together i feel like a precious counterpart to his perfection; the caramel that gives his cinnamon its consistency; a pretty or maybe beautiful girl (or woman even? who knows) who is slim with curves in all (or most) of the right places.

when we are apart, or when he's being an idiot, i feel like a waif again, overtall and gangly and kind of kiddie-looking. but it's mostly the former, fortunately.

we connect emotionally, intellectually, academically and physically, and it never gets old. he's the only person i trust enough to share music and art and literature with; some of my best memories are of the two of us trudging through the sweltering heat at the mall on washington, then dying of relief when we stepped into the arctic chill of the air-conditioned smithsonian museums. and of lying on the couch in my basement at home, reading the story i wrote for his birthday. and of spooning on my bed at school, listening to and analyzing rimsky-korsakov's "scheherazade" (my favorite composition of all time), an experience i eventually wrote a poem about. (i'm not wild about it but i might post it anyway, once it's been polished.) and of making collages that invariably get pitched after they are glued together, unless egad! they are brilliant, in which case they get tacked on my wall or his fridge.

there are a lot of other things i could say about him but, again, words don't do love justice, they really don't. kisses can, but only sometimes. music typically succeeds.

ugh. this unstructured and entirely pathetic post brought to you by the glittery pink month of february, annually the hardest time to be without a boyfriend. which, shocking as it may be after all that gushing, i am. it is the worst limbo ever and all i want for my birthday (thursday; woohoo) is to shake free of it for twenty-four blessed, romantic hours.

and that was my contribution to valentine's day.