Every Always Now

Every night I have been dreaming of warmth and clouds and the soft indentations of fingers on wet sand.

I have never been able to keep still - not in sleep, because I have to fight darkness and run from fire, and not awake, because my toes itch to move and my shoulder blades are always looking for the sky - I have never been able to keep still, but my bones have been quieter at every sunset, and my muscles warm to melting more quickly each night.

I always forget what I look like until I get to see through new eyes, see again for the first time my own valleys and constellations and mistakes and flows and triumphs.

Every time I think it can't get better, and every time I am wrong.

I have never felt so solid, so far from fragile, yet light and soft - I am always first morning light, peeking and skittering over hills and tumbling onto eyelids, nervously announcing my presence and apologizing right away - until now, because now I feel like afternoon light, sliding through curtains to play with dust motes and dancing on glasses of water, still shy but affirmed in my existence, in my belonging.

Every morning I wake up with the taste of the sun tucked into the curve of my lips and heat resting on my hips and in the hollow of my throat there, kissed there and left with the promise of more.