As I lie here, breathing you in, I feel life jumping from your heaving chest. Our breath synchronizes until I don't know where your air stops and mine begins.

You are grabbing my waist. I don't feel the need to suck in or make myself less. You love me all of me. Even the ugly and broken parts.

Slowly, your fingers trace my spine before jumping to the constellation of freckles on my back. You know where they are without looking. You've traveled here many times before.

I touch you too. I trace your face with my fingers, moving from your closed eyes to your strong nose and beautiful lips. Slowly, I move my fingertips down the side of your neck, then along your arm, eventually landing on your open palm.

I smile. This brings me back to the first time I told you I loved you. We were lying in your college apartment in the mid-morning light, looking at each other with such intensity it felt magnetic. I couldn't look away. Those brown, syrupycraters were the only prisons I never wanted to escape from.

Without breaking our gaze, I grabbed your palm, and, with fingertip ink, outlined I love you over and over. I put all of my energy into your palm, internally begging for you to understand my message. To understand what you meant to me.

But, you said nothing and smiled. You didn't know what I wrote. But, in a way, you kind of did. You pulled me closer, and I knew you felt it too. Sometimes, words don't need to be said to be felt.

Sometimes, when I'm touched, I'm catapulted back into my childhood body. I can hear my tiny toes running across slick living room tiles, trying to escape heavy footfall, close on my tail. Behind me is a tall monster, with curly hair and an angry snarl, arms flailing and red-faced. She's the human Godzilla.

No matter how fast I was, she was always faster. When she caught me, her finger bullets would target my backside, arms, or anything within range. After several smacks, her rage would subside, the red draining from her face. She'd often give a half-hearted apology, warn me not to act up again, then return to cooking, cleaning, or talking on the phone. The transform- ation from Godzilla to woman was often So...