As we drove away from the movie theater, your hand slipped into mine. So comfortable, so frighteningly familiar. You mention where you want to go and squeeze my hand. I navigate our city and where I used to only see geometric miscellany, something about your warmth changes everything.

Every block, apartment complex, business, and stretch of industry is vibrant on that night. Angles, hues, and shapes I've never seen until you. We flew by those night streets, a surreal blur of towering buildings and warm neon lights. It was almost alien to me. 

There was no music on even though I always had the radio playing. Logic would simply say I never turned it on because my hand was entwined with yours. I think it was something deeper, something without a name. I was meant to just listen to the smooth hum of the road, the noise soothing to me. 

At times, your hand opened. I would trace your palm with a fingertip, soft and slow, already memorizing some mysterious flesh map. A beautiful, looping terrain. Later, you would ask why I did that. I was scared to say and you, with a silly smile, said to not be afraid. That you wouldn't laugh. Maybe giggle a little. 

"I see our lifelines woven together when I do that," I would answer in a near whisper, barely able to meet your gaze. 

And your response would come in the form of an almost painful hug, the smile gone, a barely noticeable tear traveling down your cheek as you embraced me. 

I see us like this at times. A panorama that's oblivious to time, moments untouched and crystalline in their clarity, no matter what order they're in.

And I still trace. I watch the city's streetlamps, much like your eyes, seemed to course with a beautiful bioluminescence. An otherworldly glow I always want to understand.

Stars dotted the clear sky that night, tiny silver ornaments strewn along the heavens. They filled your eyes and in that moment, a clear reflection of the boundless universe. The glow of such a sky in you was amaranthine beauty, ceaseless in its possibility and wonder. It was the second time I can remember truly being stilled by something in this world. 

The first was months ago....

I breathe you in. A perfume of your body, floral fields and coconut shampoo. Your eyes are starlight to me. I've also seen fireworks burst behind them, reflections of an exploding sky above as we shared our first kiss in thick summer heat. Warm lips upon mine, curiously searching. Such a quick kiss, almost tentative, but a fever spread instantly the uncertainty of the uncertainty of the new overtaken by an awakened need. 

Your skin is the moon. I've seen it from a distance, almost unreachable, a plain of fair smoothness. I've seen it up close. Have touched you for the first time on a twilight beach. Waves endlessly hissed from the shore. Bonfires in the distance, our friends drinking and laughing. My hand finds its way into yours like a reflex. You giggled when you squeezed my hand, and I dropped my drink. 

I want my skin to know the feel of nothing else again....

And it's happening again. We're parked In the neighborhood, nestled in a cul-de-sac, shrouded by overgrown trees. And I'm stilled during what plays back as a frenzied loop through memory later on.

It wasn't simply your hair, pinned back and nearly gleaming with captured moonlight. It wasn't the way you sighed when my lips grazed your exposed collarbone. Or the way you would bite your lip, sometimes before a kiss and sometimes during, charged with undeniable energies. It wasn't just a mixture of perfume and the fragrant desire between your bare legs, parting excruciatingly slowly, as if no matter how familiar we are, you part as if revealing yourself for the first time. It wasn't just the hardened pink buds of your nipples trapped between my fingers. It was that first slow, tentative breach inside where I  trembled as all of me was tightly sheathed.

It was the way you whispered my name again and again. A dark chant. A loving prayer. A primal plea. A slow and throaty exhale against my ear as your hips writhe, as my arms lock around your back and move with you, deeper into your feverish, nectar-soaked tunnel. 

Even then, I knew it was a sound that only a soulmate could actualize. It was everything. It was you. The collective of who I always ached to claim, to belong to. 

The first time didn't last long. Such initial intensity, I believe, is never meant to. 

I spilled deep into you, spurt after thick spurt of warm essence fleeing, rocketing into your tight depths. Your fingers clenched around my back, hips raised, legs locked. Walls squeezing me. Your body saying mine.

I remember being terrified, only for moments, hoping it wasn't over too fast.

I cupped your face in my palms after, skin still hot, pulses racing. At first, I think I did that to make sure you were real. Even though our bodies remained in a tangled knot of bare flesh and I was still inside, I had to touch more. Your eyes read mine, searched through me without even trying.

"I'm here," you whispered with a soft smile and I loved feeling the vibration of your words thrumming against my palms, "always."

I replayed the words over and over. 

In that backseat, its leather glistening with moonlglows and perspiration, it was like a steel dome had been clamped over us, a soundproof lid safely sealing us in our first true joining. Amplifying every breath, intensifying the scent of our ripe bodies, our mingled aromas. Our lovemaking, which had seemed brief. 

And your words were amplified. Spoken with such tender clarity, they were like a vow long before any others we may exchange. I could already feel it, some nameless bond that had been growing. Now, it was something unbreakable, a beautiful invisible tether. 

Your face pressed to mine, locks framing us, and all I see is a beautiful silhouette.

"I'm keeping you inside me as long as possible," you whisper, clenching, and then hugging tightly.

My arms encircle you and want to hold on to everything about tonight no matter what happens. I want to be able to return and see every moment drawn out, a living panorama. They are all encapsulated. They each have their own glow, their own meaning. 

And rather than dimming with time's passage, they are magnified. Each one exists in its own contained tiny universe, a bare nucleus of memory. 

They belong to us.