150 days.

I wrote you a song in my head. And it played out with your eyes looking into mine. That slow, casual, strut you took towards me, it made up the background score for that. For when you came close(r) to me and slid down the pillow, and I turned into you, so close that I could count every crease of your forehead and shirt, only there were none of the former and I added lots to the latter. The lyrics were perfect for when you eased into me and leaned in, for when you pulled me so close that there was no space for air between us and met my lips, purely because you couldn't wait any longer. You'd waited seven years after all.

The first verse played over our first pegs of vodka and the bridge covered the dressing up. But it was a never ending chorus as we walked out for a night together, and never looked back. Every step since then has been a song, a melody that we built together, the lyrics of which I wrote on my way to you but they never panned out until your touch met mine, your breath muffled mine.

I love you, not like they do in books or movies or plays. Because they seem to know what they're talking about. I don't. I love you like the unknown, the one still left to unfold. I love you like I love the first red rose I preserved in the pages of my favourite novel years ago, in the hope that some day I could take it out and hand it to someone who'd know what it meant for me to keep it all this while. I love you like I love the baby book that my parents made for me and I'd read and reread just because it made me see myself as someone who could be loved when I saw myself from their eyes. I love you like the first cassette I ever bought, and the lyrics of every song which it had that I memorised because suddenly I'd found something that completed me and made this universe make sense. I love you like like I love the last page of all my notebooks because that is where I scribble what I never have the courage to write out and then trace those words some lazy afternoon afterwards, knowing precisely what I felt back then and unknowing why I could never say it out.

I love you for I don't know any other way, I love you for I don't know what I'd do without it, I love you for I can't stop myself. I love you because I do.