Falling Like a Rock
She turns to you in the middle of the night and says, "Tell me how it happened."
You hum into her skin in response, burrowing closer because it's late and she's warm.
She threads her fingers through your hair, nails light across your scalp, over and over. Her voice is deep and rough with the sleep she's refusing. "Tell me how it happened."
She's serious; you hear the intensity at the edge of her words. You shift your weight, sliding up her body until you're lying face to face, sharing air.
Quietly, you ask, "What do you mean?"
"This. You. What changed your mind, about me, about us?"
It feels like so long ago- the time you didn't know you could (and would) love her. Yet, the words are already on your lips, like they've been there since your first kiss, since she overturned your world, waiting to be spoken.
"I had expected to feel for you what any scientist feels for her experiment, care and pride, like for a treasured toy. And for a while, I believed that was the case. I believed the weight in the pit of my stomach was excitement - for the experiment, for the science.
"Then you kissed me and in the moment before we touched, you weren't science. You were just you. And you were everything. I understood quite suddenly: the feeling in my stomach wasn't excitement. It was the feeling of falling. I was falling.
"I was terrified to open my eyes and find out everything beneath me had shifted; I had shifted. I was not quite who I thought I was and you were not who I thought you were. Our edges, the borders between us, weren't as clear as they had seemed.
"So I fell like a rock- fast and graceless. I made my mistakes and they hurt. Battered and bruised and falling hard for you."
She's been watching you, silent, while you speak. Her eyes have been roaming your face, searching for the truth in your words and finding it. You haven't had the heart for lies in a long time.
"Are you still terrified?" She considers you intensely, as she drags a thumb across your lip.
"Yes, completely," you say, capturing her hand and knotting your fingers together. You smile, because you're weightless now, light and free. "But it doesn't feel like falling any more. It feels like flying."