(no subject)
He is....beautiful without trying. Like when I come in and he's by himself asleep on my parents' old couch (I remember doing homework on that couch), with the flickering TV-light illuminating his soft features. How delicate and androgynously beautiful he is, how he manages to somehow look all these words - regal and elegant and graceful and aristocratic - even when he's tucked neatly into the confines of some god-awful 1970s green monstrosity.
And I watch him sleep.
And I think about how he handles everything with this supreme grace and dignity, how his presence and his composure assures me that somehow everything will be alright, that he will take care of me, of this, that he is unafraid and unconcerned. That he is here, and will not leave, and that the very thing I sometimes want to see through - his self-control and self-discipline and that tenacious, tenacious calm - is the very thing that saves me at times like now.
His slender arms are covered in scrapes and small cuts and bruises from his struggle with the dog today, and I find myself drawn to those imperfections. I have always advertised myself as his hero. His protector. His saving grace when his world fell to shit. And I listen to "Itsumo Soba Ni" and I hear the lyrics:
(translation)
If it’s to protect you
Then I won’t regret a thing
Because I’ll take any pain in your stead
I’ll always be by your side
And I think how people assume me to be that very thing, that kind of soul, all of his friends, and I assume myself to be that and I try to be that, but on nights like tonight, when I look at him sleeping, and running fingertips over tiny wounds, when I watch the way he moves through a crisis of mine, what I see is that he somehow becomes my shield, protects me, deflects the hurt in ways I cannot begin to understand.
I kiss his bruises.
Hurts gained incidentally on my behalf, through being here, through enduring this with me, hurts that he shrugged off, because the way he got them - comical, unprecedented - made me laugh on a dark day. Hurts that remind me he is steel underneath all that fragile glass and strength I will never understand or mimic, hurts that I honor with lips and tongue because...
Because.
He is who he is. And who he is, heals me without trying, when I don't deserve it, when I haven't asked.
I can't say that I am glad any of this is happening, or that my mother is ill. But I am glad that if it has to happen, he is here with me, because his presence means more than words could ever adequately express.
I thought my love for him could not get any deeper.
I was wrong.
And I watch him sleep.
And I think about how he handles everything with this supreme grace and dignity, how his presence and his composure assures me that somehow everything will be alright, that he will take care of me, of this, that he is unafraid and unconcerned. That he is here, and will not leave, and that the very thing I sometimes want to see through - his self-control and self-discipline and that tenacious, tenacious calm - is the very thing that saves me at times like now.
His slender arms are covered in scrapes and small cuts and bruises from his struggle with the dog today, and I find myself drawn to those imperfections. I have always advertised myself as his hero. His protector. His saving grace when his world fell to shit. And I listen to "Itsumo Soba Ni" and I hear the lyrics:
(translation)
If it’s to protect you
Then I won’t regret a thing
Because I’ll take any pain in your stead
I’ll always be by your side
And I think how people assume me to be that very thing, that kind of soul, all of his friends, and I assume myself to be that and I try to be that, but on nights like tonight, when I look at him sleeping, and running fingertips over tiny wounds, when I watch the way he moves through a crisis of mine, what I see is that he somehow becomes my shield, protects me, deflects the hurt in ways I cannot begin to understand.
I kiss his bruises.
Hurts gained incidentally on my behalf, through being here, through enduring this with me, hurts that he shrugged off, because the way he got them - comical, unprecedented - made me laugh on a dark day. Hurts that remind me he is steel underneath all that fragile glass and strength I will never understand or mimic, hurts that I honor with lips and tongue because...
Because.
He is who he is. And who he is, heals me without trying, when I don't deserve it, when I haven't asked.
I can't say that I am glad any of this is happening, or that my mother is ill. But I am glad that if it has to happen, he is here with me, because his presence means more than words could ever adequately express.
I thought my love for him could not get any deeper.
I was wrong.