This Is How I Want to Love You

I want to love you on a Sunday. With rain pelting against the windowpane, your toes sticking unceremoniously out from under the covers. I want to listen to you grumble as I bounce up and down beside you, always an early riser, ready to start our day, a day that belongs to the two of us, just the two of us, together. I want you to pull me down beside you, muffling my chatter with a sloppy kiss, the type that misses but somehow still falls just right. And with that, I will snuggle into the side of you, putting up a fight that isn’t, before melting into your skin that smells like sleep and you and me.

I want to love you when we’re fighting. When the anger comes coursing through, when words get spat instead of spoken. I want to watch you, a bundle of passion, a bundle of nerves, electric, loud, loud, loud, trying to find a way to explain just the way I hurt you. I want to feel that fire, close enough to get burnt. Because love, real love, is the type that stings sometimes, the type that speaks truths you never want to hear, the type that aches just a little bit all of the time. I want to bite my lip the way you like and then, just as fast as it started, I want my whispered apologies hot against your ear right where you can feel them.

I want to love you on a Tuesday, that Tuesday, the one where absolutely nothing went right. I want you to come home to me and find me shattered on the floor. You’ll fall down beside me because my pain is your pain, because your arm on my back is the only thing that helps. I want you to talk me through it, making promises–big ones we both know you can’t keep,  making promises–tiny ones we both know you can. I’ll smile, the first all day, the type of smile that feels like you’re cracking right down the center and you’ll kiss me there because words can’t quite express all you want to say. Then, we’ll get pizza from that place that’s just a little too far away but is the best in the city (well, depending on who you ask) because walking those too many blocks with you is my absolute favorite thing.

I want to love you when it’s inconvenient, when you’ve been in a grump and you just can’t get out of it. When the summer heat is sweltering and work is relentless and your car died again and everything sucks. I want to be miserable with you because hell, misery loves company and I love you. I want to let you stew. I want to get annoyed. I want to want to shake you and make you be yourself again. But I won’t, instead letting you feel the way you want to. Because that’s what I signed up for when I said I’d love you.

I want to love you at 4 am, any day, every day. I want to love you when you can’t shut your brain off, when your latest idea, this latest flash of genius just won’t quit. I want to talk to you, want to watch as excitement flashes through those plain brown eyes (the ones that totally have my heart despite being quite unremarkable), as you sprint and wiggle and write and try, try, try to figure something out for the first time but certainly not the last. I want to love you as the sun rises, even as I know my lack of sleep is going to hurt. I want my day to be made, even though I never really got a night.

I want to love you at my worst. When I say the wrong thing, when I text back too quickly, when I don’t text back at all. I want to make bad jokes, the type even you can’t laugh at, the type that make your heart feel like bursting because, and you don’t know how this happened, you really love this nerd. I want to love you with all of my faults, with my quick temper and my fear of getting too close. I want to let you see me, really, even when I know exactly what you’re going to see, even when I’m sure you’re not going to like it. I want to love you with my knobbly elbows, with the way I snore (except… I totally don’t), with every denial and every bit of defensiveness. I want to love you freely, with all of me, so that I can, in turn, love all of you.

I want to love you on a Sunday, when you’ve fallen back to sleep. I want to listen to the sound of your heart, that enthralling beat, beat, beat that keeps you alive. I want to lay there, uncovered and uncaring, just waiting for you to wake back up again, wake up so that we can make eggs, so you can make eggs when I mess them up (as I always tend to do). Always a little bit too close to each other, skin on skin when skin has no right to be in contact, I want my feet on yours as you read the paper. I want your hand on mine as I lazily flick through the channels, putting off getting a shower so I can stay in my pjs all day, putting off getting a shower so I can look at you in your pjs all day, your skin still smelling of sleep and you and me, in a way that lets me know I’m ingrained in you.

This is how I want to love you. Unapologetically, selfishly, wholly.

And especially on a Sunday.