Wonderland

Your body is a wonderland

Your body is a wonder (I’ll use my hands)

Your body is a wonderland

You’re fast asleep next to the open window when I step silently into our room. The duvet is heaped in a pile at the foot of the mattress, and your naked body is lit by the soft glow of the desk lamp above you. You look small and almost impossibly pale, stretch-curled out on a black ocean of bedsheet, head only just clinging to the edge of a pillow. There’s enough of a breeze to lift the hairs on your forearms, and I think about covering you back up again – but I can’t. Not yet. I need to look at you first. I need to drink you in – to stand in the doorway and fill my already-overflowing heart with this perfect image of you sleeping naked in our bed – because baby, you are stunning.

One mile to every inch of

Your skin like porcelain

One pair of candy lips and

Your bubblegum tongue

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how best to describe that feeling – the one I get when I look at you, especially in those quiet, unguarded moments. You’ve caught me enough times to know that it makes me smile and smile and smile, till tears fill the corners of my eyes and I have to turn away to regain some semblance of composure. There’s more to it than that though. Or less – I’m not entirely sure. The tears are because I love you, and it’s a love that’s still so astonishing to me – so huge and happy and fucking perfect – that I’m a big sloppy mess of emotion whenever I look at you and realise just how lucky I am.

The smile though? That’s a bit different. The smile is for every inch of your porcelain skin. It’s for the shine in your eyes and the way your face explodes into whooping, unrestrained laughter. It’s for the tiny scar on your left arm and the wispy tufts above your cunt; for your perfect-handful tits, and your strong, sturdy legs, and your hairy hobbit feet. It’s for all the things that I still feel like I’m seeing for the first time, even though I could close my eyes right now, with you half a world away, and bring each one instantly to mind. It’s for how much I’m in love with looking at you, and for the way familiarity only seems to make you more beautiful.

And if you want love

We’ll make it

Swim in a deep sea

Of blankets

I’m not ready for bed, but that doesn’t mean I don’t long to slide down next to you and spoon your body into mine. I want to pull the duvet over us till anyone looking down would only see the tops of our heads; they’d miss that first shuffle and squirm, as you settle back against me and murmur sleep-slurred nonsense into the crook of my arm. You’re just the right size for me to feel like I have you completely enclosed, but never swamped or drowned. I can nudge one leg between yours; lay an elbow on your belly and slide my wrist between up your tits; duck my head under your hair to taste sweat, and the warm skin on the back of your neck.

I sometimes stir in the middle of the night and reach out to touch you, just because I can – and because even when you’re dead to the world, my hand on your thigh or shoulder is often enough to bring out of you the half-giggle, half-moan that I adore so much. It says a lot about who you are that no sleep is deep enough to stop you laughing; your body is so alive, so full of joy, and I treasure those selfish moments when only I get to see it. Like everyone else, you are completely oblivious.

Something ’bout the way your hair falls in your face

I love the shape you take when crawling towards the pillowcase

When it comes to bedtime, I should beat you to the punch more often. Sneak in while you’re cleaning your teeth and removing your lenses, just so I can stretch out and wait for you to join me. You always pause when you enter the room, as if you’re surprised to see me there, and I get to watch you take off your clothes or your dressing gown while you smile down at my half-submerged face.

Then the best bit. You clamber and scurry up the bed with a charming, idiosyncratic mix of enthusiasm and grace. Your face flashes in and out of vision, half-hidden behind a curtain of hair, and it makes me want to reach out and pull you onto me. Sometimes I do. Other nights you get there in your own sweet time, straddling my waist and bending down to cover my chest with yours, or just sitting there for me to gaze at. You have the right posture to make that work in every way; shoulders back, arms by your side, thighs spread comfortably across mine – it seems so effortless and casual that part of me will always suspect you know exactly what you’re doing.

I’ll never let your head hit the bed

Without my hand behind it

No matter what you’re doing though – whether you’re sucking my cock, riding it, or waiting for me to pounce with a big grin on your face – there will always come a point where I need to reach up and swing you down, one hand behind your head and the other curled round your waist, till you’re on the mattress beneath me. It’s not a power thing, not really; I just love the way we fit together like that. And I can kiss you, properly kiss you – your lips and tongue, which taste a million times better than candy and bubblegum, because they taste like you. Everything that you are and everything that you will be is in the genetic code you pass me with each teasing, tender smooch.

Your body is a wonderland

Your body is a wonder (I’ll use my hands)

Your body Is a wonderland

But late on a Saturday night, when you have to go work in the morning, I do none of those things. It would be cruel to wake you up, even though I know you’d tell me I’m silly for thinking so. Instead I step out into the hallway and close the door behind me.

Back in the living room, I sit down at my laptop and open Spotify. I’ve been listening to the playlist you made when we moved house. It’s full of good stuff – songs I love, songs you love, and songs we’ve come to love together. I know most of them well enough to hum along, at least, and that’s what I’m doing now as I drink wine and let the night wrap me in its gathering warmth.

Towards the end of the playlist there’s this cheesy John Mayer song, which I’ve never really liked. After a minute or so, I decide to skip it, but as I reach for the mouse he takes a breath and launches into the chorus…and I stop. When he gets to the end, I hit repeat and listen again. And again.

I have to say – it’s kinda growing on me.