I like your eyes: warm Jamaican waters flecked with shards of emerald. I like the way I can never memorize them, no matter how many hours I swim through them, digging for oysters�I know you have pearls in there somewhere. I hang off your every lash. Sometimes I let go and fall to your lips, grazing them with my own. I like when you slide your pink tongue across them so they glisten with your cinna-mint saliva. I like to bite the bottom one, sucking on it so it flushes each capillary and makes your body groan. I like the salt of your neck on my tongue and the soft cotton of your shirt that smells of Old Spice deodorant and Bounce fabric softener, stretched across your chest. I like the skin on your forearms where fine golden hairs sprout and blue veins make trails that crisscross to bundles at your wrists. I like the calluses on your strong hands from sanding and sawing. I like the hat you wear so much that it�s now navy blue instead of black, and the cardboard in the brim that�s bent round like a baseball player�s peeks out of decrepit fabric. I like the peach fuzz on the outside of your ears against my pinky finger, and the silkiness of your hair, like dipping my hand into a tub of polished rocks that smells Head & Shoulders fresh.

I like when you sing and think no one�s listening, and how you always drive with the windows down�even when it�s cold outside. You just turn on the heat and burrow in a beanie. I like that you know how to spell �definitely.� I like to watch your fingers drum across your lips when you contemplate and your cheeks flush pink when your voice cracks.

I like how you answer the phone saying, �Hey, gorgeous,� in a faux-New York accent. I like to bake you brownies, just to see your eyes light up like a five-year-old in a toy store. I like the slight clamminess in your hand when you hold mine between gear shifts as we fly by car after car on the freeway at one hundred thirty miles per hour. I like how you notice when I change my toenail polish, and let me have the last pickle chip. I like when you call me, just to say hi, but not every day, so it�s always a surprise.

I like your dropped jaw when I unbutton my jeans. Were you planning to finish that sentence?

before - after