Tethering heartbeats.
Hands calloused from working to build this love anew. 
From surgically stitching together the words I choose.
I write to put you on a permanent pedestal. 
To give you full blossoms like you just won an olympic event. 
To have Something that I can fall back on like black elders to psalms 23. 
Your love’s like Christmas dinner, fulfilling and sweet. 
Your loves like the first dip of the summer. 
A reminder that the better things are sometimes the most simple pleasures.
It’s the reason this black boy has the urge to break all the curses he’d otherwise fall victim to. 
I’d like to have a book about you that I can read back when we’re old at 92. 
Of all the times I chose to write that I loved you.
Of all the times I could be the best version of a man and partner that I could be. 
Because writing’s the best solvent.
And it’s Solving the worst parts of my dark history, until the dark memories are just glitched patches in my memory, that I can’t find because my mind is full of you and me, and happiness, and 2023 being another year we grow stronger, and 1:25am blogs posts are equivalent to a 3am “i miss you text” because time differences and busy lives sometimes get in the way of me being able to shower you with the love that’s bundled up inside these words. 
And sometimes my words escape me. 
And that’s when I’m most vulnerable.
Because what more can I offer.