Morning Poem by kriti upadhyay

There are mornings I find you waking up next to me, when nights are easier than nights.
Your toes twist a little & you open your eyes looking at me with a question.
'You haven't really slept have you? '
I smile back at your knowing of me, my eyes more than pleased with the tiredness of gazing at you through the night.
I get up to move away the curtains to let the light into the dark room, when you take my wrist in your hand and ask me to let the darkness linger.
'But I want to look at your face more clearly.'
And you take my palm & run it across your face, you run through my fingers across your cheek, then your lips & chin, the insides of my palm slowly close in on your eyes.
'Is this clear enough? ' you ask.
'Almost' I reply.
I take my slightly dry lips across your cheek, tracing your jaw line, your nose and then your forehead & then my lips let go off soft kisses over your eyelids.
I mumble in your ears 'Clearer'.
I can hear you smile, soft in my ears & on these mornings I understand how a smile sounds.
You turn around pushing me right to the edge of our bed & I have to balance two bodies, just so that we don't fall off from this edge.. 'The edge of our happiness'
And I try to push back our bodies to the center into the safety but you resist, the thrill of being at the edge is something you've always seeked more than the 'centered safety'
So I hold you in the clasp of my arm, trying to merge two bodies into one so that we fit right onto that edge of the bed, in the matrix of my morning dream.
I feel the curve of your lower rib brush across my bare arm & your lungs expand as you inhale the scent off the back of my ear lobe & gently contract as you filter the thoughts off my head.
Our breathing slows itself down as the sun goes up and you rise like a bird takes off a flight.
I see you dissolve into the sunlight, the morning turns into the stark day and I begin to wait again for the night to bring the morning to me.