When naps on my couch turned into nights in my bed together, it didn't take long for my circadian rhythms to adjust to love's.
Here and now, even through so drunk, deeper than usual sleep, I feel her wake against me.
I've always been a light sleeper, but Bella's up every few hours throughout every night, sometimes from bad dreams, sometimes just with need. I love the feel of her shifting to be closer, like my arms are shelter. Like just by gathering her to myself, I can keep her from what came before.
I wish I could.
My head pounds with too much vodka. I'm so hard, and she's so soft, and there's a deep, lingering ache to push and move and come. I want her mouth on me, her hands, anything.
Hours before dawn, in our room lit only by dim blue, red and green nightlight, my girl nestles against my chest like she wants to fold into me, and the ache to fuck and come gives way to wishing I could open my heart and tuck her into the deepest part of it while I comb her hometown for the two reasons she's afraid of the dark, and make them both spit teeth between wishes of their own that their daughter had told her teachers or her friends, or the cops -
Anyone before me -
What home was to her.
In her sleep, love's fingers curl into my hair and she hums over my heart.
I swear it hums right back.
I can't take away what's happened, but I can be home for her. I can make a home of holding her, of letting her hold me with all the same lifelong yearning I have to hold.