to         christopher 
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it is so nice, how you are, and the niceness of it keeps catching me off guard, you just being there how you are, doing it continuously and not stopping. just being that way in rooms and in cars and in the morning when you haven't yet spoken, or in the evening when i am trying to read and i am not reading, i have not read a single word, i am just watching how you are from behind a book like some kind of coward. it is so nice, how you are, and i wish you would never stop it. 

you were like that yesterday and you were like that last week and presumably you were like that before I knew you, being exactly that way, and no one told me, which seems like an oversight, which seems like information i should have had much earlier. someone really should have pulled me aside at some point in the preceding years and said: listen. there is a person who is going to be this way with you and for dignity’s sake you will want to brace yourself. because in all that before time i was (fine. i was (whole. i was (mine. i did not know about the days and their dividing line with you on the other side of it.

i was  not yet taken apart by this. 

i did not know and then i did and i have not been(fine or(whole or (mine in the same way since + i would not choose to go back to it      + that’s assuming i even could

now in this room the window is open and it's cold yes and you are still here under the covers in the warm part of the bed, and i am going for coffee now and i am coming back with them, with the coffees as evidence. i have been thinking of this since that time in the old room. with mirrors all the way up the walls, kaleidoscope like, each surface giving you back to me multiplied and slightly different. you coming in holding two hot mugs + not making anything of it. and then later watching something, a film and italian i think, the protagonist bringing the coffees in and you said wouldn’t that just be the loveliest thing to do for someone 
and yes yes yes it is.

and i like surprising you because there is this laugh that bubbles up from some under-place, small + subterranean, and when it comes up it comes up fast and it can’t be helped, and i love it more than almost anything then. i love it more than the face, and i love the face enormously, but the laugh is the face with all its walls down, the face in its original state & before it knows anyone is watching, and i would do almost anything to get to it. i would say almost anything, i would make a fool of myself in seven languages, i would get lost deliberately, i would bring up the platypus, all five of them. i would start a sentence with no idea where it’s heading just to see if you follow me into it. i would advance theories i don’t believe in + defend them past the point of reason just to be ridiculous. i would invent convictions, die on hills i have not even visited, disagree with you just to witness the whole stupid spectacle + enjoy it oh so much. i would try to hold eye contact, which is something i can do now because we have been practicing. i am much better at it than i was, and i would hold it longer than strictly necessary + past the point of comfort just to make a point about having improved.