“I’ll make up for all the years I was supposed to be kissing you.” ~ Leo Christopher

~

It seems that I’ve run out of words.

I’ve run out of the phrases and texts that, when strung together, taste just as sweet as your lips.

Perhaps I’ve said all there is to say, but even when I roll that sound on the tip of my tongue I know that’s untrue. I think maybe it’s that I’m tired of talking; I’m sick of speaking when all I want is to do this thing called life—with you—and see not where it ends, but what magic we can bump into along the way.

It seems lately as if anything I say is just a shadow of what it really means.

I could say I love you, but I don’t think it’s as meaningful as the way I kiss your eyes and forehead, holding your face in my hands as the most precious of gifts. I suppose sometimes it’s not that words don’t matter, but rather that they may fall short of truly expressing all the emotion that is felt.

Or maybe it’s just that I’m tired of using words when it seems sometimes I communicate best with you in silence.

I love spinning vowels and syllables together to create poetry, to give life to the rise inside of cut “of” my heart and the dreams that spin through my mind, but at the end of the evening as the moon hangs over head, it’s not words I want upon my mouth—but your lips.

I don’t want to tell you how I care about you—I want to show you.

Even though others have never crafted these worlds from such simple words, I want to do more than just say all of the ways I would love you—I want to practice them, I want to try them on for size, and I want to show you that though my prose may be beautiful, reality would be even better.

No life is flawless, but neither of us is looking for that anyway.

Instead, I could promise you, not with my words, but with my hand in yours that no matter what you’d face, it would never have to be done alone. I’d promise with back rubs of almond oil at the end of a long day, and I’d promise with warm kisses against your shoulder blade as the light filters through the drawn shades.

It seems we can promise with words, but if we actually aren’t living them they become nothing more than a wasted breath of “should haves.”

I suppose I’ve always been better at showing rather than telling despite my aptitude for spinning new galaxies out of the beauty that rolls off my tongue. I’d rather be a feeling that you can grab a hold of with both hands and love the hell out of, rather than a whisper of—saying all the right things, yet always falling short.

So, I’d rather stop talking for now—possibly for longer.

I’d like to keep silent and let you trace my secrets with your fingertips until their beauty brings tears to your eyes. Feeling those things that I don’t say, possibly out of fear or maybe just out of trepidation of ruining whatever it is that we are doing here. But, you can still hear them as our faces are touching and the rest of the world has become nothing more than a distant memory of a life we both tried to live.

I’d like to kiss your lips softly at first, tasting your thoughts and reading your eyes. Sometimes it seems that your silence speaks to me louder than most when they use their commonplace words, and so I’d like to hear your heart within the darkness when there’s nothing to do but sink into the magic of you.

There may be times when we need to explain ourselves, or what we are after in this life. Yet, at this point, maybe we’ve simply said all there is to say for right now. Perhaps, what’s being written into the pause is the tentative desire of manifested love.

The sweetness that comes from not telling—but showing what it is we want.

There has never been another like you, nor will there ever be again; this is something that I know with deep certainty. It’s of no use to search the world for someone who can settle even my darkest demons, or kiss me into sublime submission. Something happens when you realize that you’ve somehow, in a world full of millions of people, stumbled upon your one, that one person who was created for you.

It’s realizing that you’re home—and there’s nowhere else you’d rather be.

Words may be beautiful, but sometimes perhaps they become superfluous. Nothing more than just clouds of intentions. And so, while I know that they can make a heart skip a beat, this time I’d simply like to use my lips, my hands, and even the softness of my hair brushing against your skin to say what I really mean.

Because I don’t want to just spend time telling you how I would love—I’d rather just show you.

I’d rather take my time, take these moments, and hopefully take your heart into a place that’s unlike anything you’ve experienced before—far away from whatever is left of your ragged-edged comfort zone.

Sometimes words fail because the heart is so full.

And the only thing I’d like to do now is to take your hand and run it along my soft skin, letting our past fall to the ground between us, and peeling back the layers of my heart with your breath so that anything or anyone who came before you and I becomes nothing more than a peaceful memory and a lesson learned.

I’d like to begin, but before we do that I’d like to use my lips to show you exactly how I feel.

Because some things are just better felt than heard.

~

Author: Kate Rose
Image:  Ashley Harrigon/Flickr
Editor: Lieselle Davidson