And This is the Sound of My Heart Beating

It’s slightly out of rhythm at the thought of you.

My hands shake–they never shake.

I take in the beauty of you in bits and pieces, like looking through a viewfinder of a camera. I pan from the thick curls of your hair, the dark gold glint of the scruff of your jaw. My eyes trace the collarbone all the way to the simple sculpted V where the muscle of your shoulder joins your bicep.  I focus on the veins just beneath your skin, cording around your arms, disappearing as my eyes slowly find your fingers wrapped tightly over my wrist.

It’s thundering.

You can feel it, can’t you? The pulse just beneath the paper thin stretch of skin pounding against your fingertips.

You smile at me, I smile back as you slowly release my wrist and thread your fingers with mine. Then you pull me against you and we watch the sun rise, turning shadows into light, clearing the fog over the ocean.

You lean in and kiss the pulse just beneath my jaw.

“This is crazy.” You steal the words right out of me.

Yes, I know. Can’t you hear the beating of my heart?

The sun breaks through and the water is impossibly blue.

Blue. Impossibly blue. Like the belly of the ocean.I could fall into them and never find my damn way out. You know what I’m talking about.

You laugh suddenly, and I don’t know why, but now I’m laughing, too.

Because this is too damn crazy. I look down at your arms wrapped around me and I marvel at the way the dusting of light gold hair contrasts with the tan. I trace my fingers along your arm and carefully rest them over your pulse. I feel your smile over my shoulder.

And this is the sound of my heart beating.