Peter Wallace

Almonds take the form of spheres in your presence. A peek at you is proscribed, yet it’s the only thing I set out to accomplish. An accomplishment is supposed to be a journey with a destination reached. We are meant to go together. Please understand, though, that I feel paralyzed around you. Regardless, your presence is a testament to the existence of another realm. My every world expands for you!

You are all but everything to me. You are the air I need for sustenance, and I hope that air continues to throw unto me every temperature everywhere we go. Please give me a suffocating embrace. Cling to my skin, igniting a fiery warmth that pulses through me, leaving me yearning for relief. Ooze into my bones like a creeping chill. Wrap around me with an icy grip that numbs my skin and makes my every breath feel sharp and crisp, leaving me longing for you evermore.

And I hear your air. It flows over me like a melody, enveloping me in a deep, resonant trembling that pulsates and ignites my core. Your laughter’s lovely low and high lilt synchronizes with every brisk beat of my heart. You can talk me up and down, round and around. My eyes move with every pop of your lip and every flick of your tongue. I hear you with every fiber of me. You are both my symphonies and whispers.

You are time to me—an hourglass giving and taking simultaneously. You make time to defy laws and normality. You can make time slow down and speed up. You make a week feel like a day and a day feel like an eternity. All the while, you show me that hours are not forever. I yearn to slow you endlessly. Please give me more time. How I long. It will never make sense.

I am caught in your low contrast. Thinking of your features can drive me to any world’s edge. It makes me want to step forward and reach my hand out so tenderly, but I cannot make contact. My eyes dart left and right in a rapid, fluid dance, like pendulums swinging back and forth. They search for yours, but any edge is too soft to be made out. You’re all but round edges while you’re everything. In the light, you are dark.

I love you like you’re all I’ve known. Yet still, we compete for mystery.