My arms slide under you, curling around your back, clasping your broad torso. I hold onto you as if you were the trunk of an old tree. I wish to feel your face closer to mine, so I draw my arm out from under and mould my palm into the back of your neck as lift my head to rest on your shoulder. My fingertips caress your soft thin skin and tickle the follicles of the little curly black hairs spiralling above.
I release my hand and extend it as far as I can to grip the edges of your frame as if in a desperate attempt to hold on before something sweeps me away. I inhale and lean in while calm and contentment enshrouds me as a fairy tiptoes into the room and sprinkles me with the dust of gentle inebriation. Your pores exude the raw smell of you, molecules mixing with the fresh clean fragrance of your t-shirt to create a sweet earthy scent that I gently sniff out – it binds to my senses like a film of intoxication as it settles over my brain. I tilt my head sideways for my nose to rest somewhere below yours, so that I can catch the warm pungent breath that you expel – a stain onto the air – and savour it by drawing it deep into my lungs, inflating it to the full so that no space is wasted. The smell has a hint of petroleum, but is so distinctive, familiar and reassuring in its entirety that I’m convinced I’ve come across it before, entangled with the tenuous memory of a place, incident or feelings past. I wait a second longer than usual to let my chest fall, and pace my breathing so that we alternate, like the lift and fall of a see-saw.
Reflections 