I want you to to kiss my forehead before you ever kiss my lips

not because it’s cliche

but because you want to communicate to me that you care

because caring is the beginning of the kind of love that I am

because we mistake everything for love

I don’t want you to love me the fleeting way you love chocolate, or pie or rib eye or even scotch

I want your heart to peacefully open at me the way it does when you sit facing a technicolored sunset on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean under a perfect sky

you can remember this love, now, if you close your eyes, invading your cells

I want to feel that when you kiss my forehead

After you’ve seen my good days, my bad days, my blah days

doubt and fear breath through my eyes

excitement burst through my smile and the pitch in my voice

and a single tear, containing a million sobs, well up and slide down my cheek

after we’ve brushed against eachother a million times, insignificantly

and that one time, you knew

and even though you’ve craved my hips since the first time we met

that one time, you knew you first had to show me that you care

 

I want you to want what’s best for me, not for you

Chicken soup at my door, without a sound

even when you know I want to see you

you know that sleep is more important

 

I want you to tell someone, “that’s my job now

to protect her and stand up for her

even though she’s strong

I’m going to stand proud and do what’s right, always

and when she whispers to me, “Baby, that’s not right” or “You hurt me” and my heart cringes at her disapproval

I know she knows, and I look at her, without saying a word, she knows I will right my wrongs”

 

I want to smile at you from a short distance when you’re being kind to (any) woman and feel pride,

“That’s my man – my wonderful man”

I want to fall asleep knowing you’re huddled against me because there’s no one else that would fit so perfectly in that space.  And on that  one time when you  need to turn the opposite way in the night, I want to turn with you and let you feel me, now, huddled against you, clumsily, because I’m smaller.  Because even though I know you’re my man, and you’ve got me, I will turn with you and let you feel the love and warmth that you provide for me night after night.

I don’t want this, it just is – that no man has reached the depths of my pleasure they way you have.  Consistently feeling my every movement and responding to it. Always finding the place where two worlds collide. It just is.  I am one of the so very lucky few that got it all. Worlds that never meet, are fully intertwined in how we love.

I want all of this, after you’ve first kissed my forehead. Silently whispering, “I care about you, I care about your heart.”

Never asking for anything back.

 

SuzyQ