I stare into the trees with my foggy eyes, who beg for me to lean over two inches in order to grab the glasses that will aid them in seeing the tiny pine needles on the evergreens. But if I move, he might feel my shift in thought.

            I sip my tea and watch him as he searches for a record that might just describe how he feels in the most discreet of ways. At least, I think that’s what he’s doing, as that’s what I would be doing; but maybe I have it all wrong, and he’s just looking for something to fit the mood.

            “I can hear you thinking,” he says with his back turned to me, crouched next to the bookshelves that would be bowed in the middle if they were my own. It’s the scariest thing he has ever said to me. Anxiety reaches down my throat and grabs at my intestines, reminding me that it has a firm grasp on whatever the fuck this dynamic is.

            “Oh you do, huh?” I say it with a smirk and a sly laugh. I’ll play it off like it’s nothing at all. That’s what I always do. I could never explain to him what is actually going on inside my head. I’m too afraid of what he would think. “What do you hear?”

            He glances back at me, unsure of what to say. It’s like looking at a mixture of oil and water where a car had been parked after a rainy day: You can ask what color someone sees, but there is so much to say, and so little words to explain how nostalgic it makes you for the years when rainbows made you squeal.

            “I don’t know. You tell me.”

            But I can’t. Or, I guess I could, but I won’t.

It’s the way he sighs after opening his eyes in the morning. The way he brushes my hair off my shoulder and onto my back, all the while running his fingers down my spine. The way he has built a fire in my belly that grows stronger with every touch.

            It is the fire that worries me the most. It’s comfortable at first. That’s how it tricks you. It keeps you warm, gives you light, reminds you of stories and songs sung around campfires while your father told you how much he loved your sense of wonder.

            But it also takes—and devours. It stares you in the face while it steals everything you’ve ever known. What it doesn’t touch in flame, it scars in smoke. It will never leave you the way it found you. So while I wish I could tell him he has lit a match behind my eyes and reminded me of open skies, dancing branches, and curious owls, I can only bring myself to say, “You.”