Some small part of me, flawed with possessive and obsessive need, keeps having this fantasy in which you ask me to marry you, in a certain sense sight unseen, waters utterly untested. Foolish and daring and desired. The first kiss the one that seals us up together in the fever dream of impulse. Or rather, the impulse that stays and stretches itself languid out through time, sticking its fingers into many days until finally: there, blooming forth to the surface with the appearance of spontaneity. It seems only appropriate, that the rules could only be broken or changed, risks taken, when you are certain I will not abandon the game, that it and you are not some toy to me to be discarded when the novelty wears off, when some days the toy does not shine or sing or crawl across the carpet when it’s supposed to. No. It seems right to use so grandiose a gesture to assure you, the moments when you falter and drop are as valuable to me as when you swagger through in perfect time and say the clever thing. Both the breaks, and the things between the breaks. Not only the sumptuous articulation of pain, but the pain itself, in all its sloppy, petty inconvenience. I want to breathe into your mouth when words fail us, when our temper tantrums and our skittish hands get too far ahead of us where games can’t save us. I want to forgive and be forgiven and be condemned and be regained and victor and child and the face of god and the rotting leaves, in a flick of those eyes looking up and down across a room.