Damaged and unguarded, the length of me cast haphazard over your bed, I barely hold my own head up in the presence of your grace. My hands feel heavy, heavy, slow, casting long arcs out over your skin, hoping to catch at your pleasure, lure your soft sighs. Mouth to mouth, I would no sooner give up the taste of you than my own heat-making, heat-seeking tongue. The startle of the word love on your lips never gets old, never gets worn, never loses its glitter and promise.

I am tired, love. I have met you at the crest of a long journey, a thankless chore of a decade which took its measure from my soul and skin. I touch your jaw, circle your ear, brush back your beautiful unruly hair, sapping tiny bits of life from your body. If I asked you to fill me, we would both waste away.

Instead we build a new scaffolding, a sturdy tower of intertwined brawn: we are neither of us too scared, we are neither of us too weak, we are neither of us too lost to raise this up. My grip on your arms, the soft lean of you late at night onto my chest. A perfect faith: that when we ascend what we have built, we will still have our feet in the earth and our souls in the sea.