I find myself imagining you often—imagining the two of us stripped of pretense, lying close, the small electric shock of seeing one another without armor. I picture the slow, astonished hum of recognition when eyes meet skin for the first time, the rush that follows, the hunger that quietly deepens into something tender and uncontainable. We would learn each other's contours and silences, trace the private geography of one another's bodies, and in those shared intimacies find a language that needs no speech. It is a longing for union and reassurance as much as for pleasure: the warmth of a shared bed, the comfort of arms that both shelter and ignite, the mutual giving and receiving that leaves us both more ourselves.
