Please, take my heart for a little trip

It’s you, and I, and the moonlight seeping through the window sill, one very late night in December.

We’re facing each other; I seek for a secret behind those clear orbs of yours, and you look at my face as if I was a Mona Lisa painting. Heads on pillows, a blanket for two. The room is covered only with dim lights, and it is cold. Nothing ever wins against a frigid winter and that is also why we choose to lie down on the bed, exchanging sheepish smiles with hearts full of love. There’s always something to talk about: your no-sugar iced americano, my favorite classic-styled fried rice, your endless meetings, my late night working time, and so on, and so on, and so on. But tonight, under the starless sky and the air that is too cold, we haven’t said anything to each other than mere chuckles.

I think I can figure out the reason why.

“We could’ve celebrated your birthday outside. It’s a nice winter night, Bub.” It’s me and my hoarse alto voice, trying to catch your attention faintly. Even with the blanket covering almost all parts of my body, the tip of my bare shoulder still freezes from the cold. Your hand comes out of that very same comfortable blanket to have my shoulder covered in it. I can hear your calm breathing right there. It’s just so you; calm and well-composed and grounded. Sometimes I wonder if you actually meditate, because I perceive your mindfulness as whole as Buddha’s. I can’t match it. Sometimes you just seem so far away and my hands are not that long, and capable, to reach you.

“It’s cold.” You pull an answer, matter-of-factly. Two seconds after your sentence, I can feel your arm touching mine. I have my fingers clinging onto yours as a respond. We’re doing nothing if someone’s looking from the outside, but everything happens right under the blanket.

“It’s your birthday month, darling.”

“We can just celebrate everywhere.”

Unconsciously, a smile’s plastered on my face, just like that.

“Like, right here, for example?” I can be such a tease and you’ll recognize it right away. You’re an attentive lover, a good one at that. You listen carefully and encode my gestures, turning them into a whole readable literary for both of us. Right now, what you’re doing is squeezing our hands and hold me tight, finger by finger, like you’re marking up every inch of it to make sure you miss nothing.

A bright smile is placed upon your amiable face when you repeat after my question, “right here, for example.”

It takes only few milliseconds to laugh off the dry jokes, while at the same making slow moves to get closer to each other’s space between the tip of our noses. When our temples touch, I don’t miss any second to whisper, “Happy birthday?” yes, like a question, but followed with an absolute statement, “I love you like I’ve never done that in my life before.”

Closing my eyes, I come to you to steal a kiss. A quick one at first. Then I steal another one, quite longer and deeper this time. I am delivering a message through my kiss, and I know you’re just as smart to encode them into something coherent inside that brilliant brain of yours — and your most loving heart, most definitely. I say, life is better since I met you, and, it is less lonely and more colorful. And through the longest one, the final kiss that comes with a teardrop by the tail of my eye, I say, I wish in fifty years from now, you’ll still remember me — my name, the good and the bad in me. Anything, anything to remember.

Because you make me feel like I’m traveling the world through your words and stories and the warmth hugs we share. Not only in England. Japan. India. But more and more places; Budapest in Hungary, Sicily in Italy, Santorini in Greece. The Anglo-saxon’s Sussex. Sahara. The Great Everest. Greenland. Iceland. Tanah Lot.

And I’m happy, and I don’t want you to forget about it either.

So, rather than giving you a birthday gift, it is me asking something from you instead. But I have your gift with me, this heart I’ve been carrying inside me my whole life, with every sweet and bitter taste of it, the trust and distrust of it, loving you and missing you in every bit of it, and the urge to never letting you go.

Yes, I give it. I give you my whole heart.

“Kitkat?”

You call me by my name like I am the most precious thing in the world.

“You are allowed to carry my heart with you, too.”

It is one very late night in December, your birthday night, where we decide to carry each other’s hearts. We hold onto each other like we hold onto promises, believe in love like we’re living in utopia. Just the two of us. And then we hug, drown in each other’s embrace until we fall asleep, soundly like babies.

When I wake up, things may not be the same anymore. But you have my heart with you, so you’ll know that everything I did, I said, and felt the night before are all true.