the first time you fell in love, it was with your eyes closed. you poured yourself into her without any sense of explanation or consequence. it was the inevitable surprise of knowing someone up and down, the pure disbelief of discovering every crack and crevice of someone else's flesh. the shock of finding it within yourself to love someone this much, like camping with her flaws and making them coffee for breakfast. stacking pancakes and your vulnerabilities onto her plate, finger feeding her bites of both. tattooing her fears onto your fingertips, like she is aphrodite, and you, her maker, chiseled edges carved from marble, her outline imprinted into your ribs. spelling out "forever" and other lies like that. when you were eleven, you wanted to be an astronaut, skipping moon rocks across saturn's rings. no gravity to bound you to earth, to yourself. absolute liberation. seeing the grand canyon from the moon, breathing in stardust, choking back tears so vast, they could eclipse the sun. but here you are, grounded, tethered to a heartbeat echoing from your chest, her pulse a morse code message tapping "stay" against your skin. you traded cosmic leaps for quiet mornings, shared laughter echoing through sun drenched kitchens. gravity became a lover, pulling you towards her center, the weight of her absence the only vacuum. but in this surrender, you find an infinity more vast than galaxies. you map the constellations in the freckles dusting her nose, trace scars on her palms, each a testament to battles fought and won. you learn the topography of her soul, every contour etched by joy and sorrow, etched in the way her lips tremble when she whispers "i love you" in the dark. you built her a rocket ship from cardboard boxes, fueled by stolen kisses and whispered dreams. you launched her into orbit, watching her ignite with stardust, a supernova in your arms. youre tethered to her by invisible threads, woven from shared secrets and midnight confessions. your eleven year old self might scoff, scoff at the gravity of earth, at your hesitation, the burden of a heart overflowing. but as you watch her sleep, sunlight painting stripes across her cheek, you realize this love, this tethering, isnt chains... but wings. it grants you the strength to plant roots in cosmic dust, build a universe beneath her smile, and reach for the moon hand in hand, her touch the only ground control you need. mapping the infinite with her, tracing forever in the lines of her laughter, every stolen glance her milky way, every heartbeat your orbit.
