Beyond

I see you. Your rich caramel skin. Your white smile. Your sleek limbs. The innocent sensuous way you move.

I see you. Your gentle touch. Your acknowledging eyes. Your snarky wit. Your ready laughter. The way you lean into my space. Unknowingly.

I see you. Your flickering eyes sneaking a look at me over the wine glass. Looking at me in the glassed interior. Following my movements with subtle shifts of your body.

You do not see the hairs at the back of my neck stand up. You do not feel the rush of blood down my spine.

I see you. The way you smile at me a second longer than usual. How you always face me wherever you are in the room. How you manouvre conversations to speak to me about the poetry in weaving words. How you hand me the napkin before the thought has formed in my head. How you ask me if I wanted another helping before I reach out for it myself. How you speak to me and not at me.

I see you. How careful you are to soothe my ego in entertaining discussions and how you do not hold back during intense political debates. I see the respect you hold for me in your no-holds-barred arguments.

I see me. In the answering smile you draw, in the reflexive thanking touch that I extend, in the warmth of my eyes on seeing you across the room, in the gut twisting emotions you let loose in me with a slight twist of your lips.

We speak the language of tingling tension between our spaces, of crackling chemistry in fleeting glances, of knowledge of being for each other and of understanding that we can never be.

Except in the happenings beyond the dark curtain of eyelashes or in that rolling fertile expanse where stallions cavort and race with the sun on gleaming backs for a taste of green freedom.