✓ LOVE TRIAL | HEESEUNG

32 - Eternal Reflections

Heeseung's POV

I've made thinking about her an art form. I've had plenty of time to practice and perfect my craft in the time we've been together: I paint her profile into the swirling maze-like shapes that draw themselves on the backs of my eyelids when I shut them tight. I compose music that sounds like the brown of her eyes, so deep and mesmerizing that looking into them can feel like drowning.

I've written odes to her lips, hymns to her hands, an elegy to the feel of her leaving my bed, the loss of that warmth. I think about her intentionally, when things are slow at work and I'm bored out of my mind. I think about her idly, when I'm in the car, headed back home where I continue missing her. I think about her when she's next to me, and when she's not. I think about her when I'm in the shower and when I don't fall asleep.

I think about her as the woman I wanted so much, the first time we met, and as the stubborn, gentle soul that touched my heart with such tenderness. Our encounter wasn't so pleasant, and I'm sure she cursed my name under her breath for a while.

I am reminded of the woman I yearned for with every fiber of my being during our first encounter. She had a captivating aura, an allure that left me breathless and enthralled. Yet, it was her stubbornness that truly ignited a spark within me.

I think about her now, laying beside me with one arm flung over my chest and her head nestled in the crook of my shoulder as if she can't bear to stop touching me for one moment. We fought a lot, we argued passionately, our voices raised and emotions raw, our personalities clashed, our desires clashed, and at times it felt like the world conspired to keep us apart.

Yet when I try to remember what we fought about, all I can think about is her, the way her hair glows in the sunlight, the way her head tilts back when she laughs, the way her fingers look when they're threaded with mine, the way she moves around the kitchen when she cooks, the way she frowns when she's trying to concentrate, the way the words fall so easily out of her mouth, the way she gives her love freely.

She stirs, eyes fluttering and hand rising from my chest to rub at them. Her head lifts slightly to check the time on the clock. 5:57 am. The soft glow of dawn is just starting to filter through the gauzy curtains, painting the room a soft, sleepy blue.

"Couldn't sleep?" She mumbles, her voice concerned.

"No."

She props herself up on her elbow, brow creasing, her hand brushing the hair off my forehead, lowering to stroke my cheek. I don't think she even realizes she's doing it. It's simply reflex at this point.

"Are you okay?"

Yes, I want to tell her. She's next to me so of course I'm alright. She always makes everything alright. She makes me feel whole, makes me feel worthy, makes me feel like I could climb into the sky and give her the sun. She feels like family, like home, like safety, like love - like all that I'll ever need.

No, I want to tell her. To feel this happy, day in and day out, is dizzying. I can't stop thinking, wondering, and worrying about if it might end, when it might end, how it might end. How I'm terrified that someday she'll realize that she deserves someone so much better than me, someone who can give her everything she wants, everything she deserves.

How my heart is so full that sometimes I'll catch a glimpse of her and will feel like I can't breathe, can't move, can't do anything except look at her, think about her, wonder how I would go on without her.

I wish she would crack my skull open like an egg and look inside, to see all my thoughts and emotions so that she could know them without me having to say them, bumbling and awkward and inadequate, most of the words lost in my throat.

That she could read all the poems and odes and ballads and sonnets and symphonies I've written to her that I'll never be able to transcribe with something so crude and untuned as my mouth.

I want to tell her all of this. There are a thousand words on the tip of my tongue, but only three come out.