Blind

Today, it hit me. You’d learnt to fall in step with me. I remember during our first few months together, I was always slightly out of breath as I struggled to keep up with the pace of your long strides. Now, even though we don’t always hold hands, I’m not out of breath anymore on our long walks. I wonder, how much effort did go into taking half the step you are so used to taking?

A few weeks ago, while I was lying on your bed, you walked into your bedroom out of the shower with just a towel wrapped around you and casually let it drop to the floor as you dried yourself. I remember the times when you scrambled to get your boxers on before the towel dropped or when your hands leapt to cover yourself when I walked into the room. It isn’t the heated sex that I find the most intimate anymore, it’s how comfortable you feel standing buttocks exposed in front of me.

A few months ago, I woke up with the sun streaming on my face, and our limbs a tangled mess. I remember our first nights together where the touch of another human’s skin wouldn’t allow you to sleep. But now in the middle of summer, drenched in sweat, you fell asleep and stayed asleep in my arms.

When I first told you ‘I love you’, I didn’t expect to hear it back at all. And when I did hear it, I did not fully believe it. For me then, love was loud gestures, compliments and uncontrollable passion. But yours wasn’t gift wrapped boxes, little handwritten letters or sex in toilet cubicles.

It was another kind of love, a kind that’s invisible, a kind that can be felt more in its absence more than it could be seen in its presence.

Your love was the way you ridiculously twerk your “booty” for me. You were so timid and awkward in public, standing straight, calm and occupying as little space as possible, and such an outright display of absurdity made me feel like I was truly part of your life.

Your love was the way you could read me so well, see through my lies when I pretend to have watched popular British films just so that I can look “knowledgeable.”

Your love was the way you patiently wait by the roadside as I go off to explore a particularly interesting tree, your love was pulling me back every time I blindly walk into speeding traffic.

Your love was when you pushed out the word ‘cutie’, probably the first word of that kind you’ve ever uttered, when I complained that you ‘didn’t compliment me enough.’

Your love was the light touches on my cheek, the gentle caresses and the words you made up because you couldn’t verbally describe what you felt with me.

Your love was the way you blurted a quick, mumbling reply of an “I love you” rather than “I love you too” like normal people do. Back then, I thought you didn’t mean it. Now I know that you said it despite not knowing how to.

Your love was your tears that inadvertently flowed as I said goodbye to you one last time, when I’d thought all along that you could express no emotion at all.

Your love were all these little things I was blind to. But by then, it was, maybe, a bit too late.