perry 🧭

Friendship is what happens when shared trauma and shared interests converge and I think that’s beautiful.

My camera roll is full of pictures of you and it’s no wonder; you’re my favourite view.

‘This could ruin it,’ you say, but you still lean in for a kiss.
And I know we’ve spent too long circling each other, spinning until our strings got tied. We can’t untangle the knots without unraveling ourselves. But I would rather fall apart than cut the string.

They say your gaze softens when you look at someone you love and I think it’s your heart that melts and pulls at the corners of your eyes.

Before I ever loved you, I liked you. As a friend, as a person, as someone whose phone number I wanted to memorise. That was the start of it all, the beginning of the fall.

[Unsent text. 10.06 am] I’m sorry I kept stalling at dinner. I wanted to keep you here longer. Until morning, maybe. I wanted to see what you would look like sitting across from me in the kitchen under the morning light. I bet the sun would frame your face just right.

‘Am I worth the mess?’ i wonder, and you press a kiss to my temple and say, ‘You’re not a mess. Just a little stormy, and I’ve always liked the rain.’

Don’t ask me what I want. I just want you, sunkissed from afternoons spent together pulling weeds from the flower beds. I want you sleepy in the mornings, drinking tea from the ugly mug I spun in pottery class. I want one dog, maybe more. I want a decade of this, or four.

Our voices get softer when we speak to people we like. Love coats the tongue like honey and makes everything sound sweeter.

‘Are you hungry?’ You ask, rummaging through the fridge.
My eyes make the journey south from the elegant curve of your neck to the sweet dip of your waist and the generous slope of your back, traveling the length of your legs, so many kisses long.
I say: ‘Starving.’

Sometimes I reach for you just to make sure you’re still there. Daydreams tend to disappear when you blink.

‘You’re staring,’ you say, hiding a smile. ‘It’s annoying.’
And it’s true; I’m committing you to memory. I don’t want to miss a second of you.
But I don’t say that. I say: ‘Funny. Every time I look at you, you’re already looking back at me.’

Didn’t mean to always gravitate towards you, to orbit you, to linger. To find reasons, silly ones, to be near, to touch you. Unfortunately, gravity has less of a hold on me than you do.

There’s a look of love, of fondness. It’s a subtle softening of the eyes, a gentle curling of the lips that dimple the cheeks. It makes it impossible to hide away the feelings you can’t make your mouth say.

I don’t need to be fluent in every language; just yours, just to understand the ins and outs of your inner workings, the flow of your thoughts. I don’t need to learn foreign words besides the ones used for love, so I can use them on you.

I have a soft spot: for your mouth, the way it smiles and the way it pouts. For your eyes, the way they light up when you see something you like. For your hands, for your touch. For your good moods and your temper tantrums.
I have a soft spot and it’s shaped like you.

Business proposal: I make you breakfast and you pay the bill with a kiss. We do this every day, for as many sunrises as we have left.

It’s about trust, the kind you earn over time. Safety, the kind that comes with the knowledge of experience, with proof. Patience, the kind you learn when you are willing to try. It’s about choices—I would chose you over anyone, any time.

I have shortened your name into something sweet and it tastes like such a treat every time it touches my lips.

(Disastrously in love and trying to cope) we’re complete opposites and this thing would never ever work haha

I noticed. I remember. I know, because I know you. I’ve learned you like a lesson, memorised you like a poem. If attention is all I can give you, you’ve always had all of mine.

Unhinged conversations are the backbone of friendships and also just very, very fun. Let’s always be silly together.

It’s not about who fell first or who fell harder because that’s just the beginning of the story. It’s about the small miracle of ending up on the ground at the same time—four knees scraped, four elbows bruised, two hearts bleeding and a couple of silly matching smiles.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ I whisper, and it’s more of a plea than a question.
‘Like what?’
I don’t say: Like I am something you crave. Something you’d want to devour.
Because I would let you.

When I think of our future it’s not the big, flashy moments I imagine. It’s grocery shopping with you pushing the cart behind me. It’s lying on the couch with your head on my lap or washing dishes and passing them to you to dry. It’s the boring, beautiful slices of life.

I want to see the world twice; through my eyes and through yours. I want to walk with you through a foreign city at night and see the bright lights reflected in your eyes. I want to look at you as you admire the view.

It’s a soft kind of love. Not weak but gentle, sweet. It’s the kind of love that heals, the kind that feels like a kiss on a bruise, a whispered, ‘there, all better now.’ It’s the kind of love that is less of a fall and more of a soft landing in a safe space.

Like the best passages from a treasured book and the lyrics to my favourite song, I want to know you by heart.