Puddles.

I keep getting lost

in the puddles of azure

that dot your face,

tucked behind delicate lashes,

and framed by those brows

whose color betray

your towheaded disguise.

Those eyes.

And the peculiar way

they sometimes won’t meet mine.

Your bright blues avoiding my dark browns.

You look away,

not like someone squinting at the sun,

but like a dental hygienist avoiding the light

of the little gun they use to set the polymer of fillings.

I can’t tell why.

Is it because you’re nervous?

Because I make you so?

Or is it to protect yourself

from what happens when our eyes do lock

with such intensity

that I feel you scouring every inch of my soul.

Never invasive,

but curious and intimate,

such that my stomach forms a little knot

that only unties itself when i get you to laugh,

by which time you know it's too late

to return to that prior state,

where the soulful stare was just a look.

Where this thing we share

was not a thing.

It's the kindness

that is so hard to escape.

Encoded in your irises,

I find it most alluring.

I love the angelic sweetness it lends your visage,

made all the more apparent

by the softness with which you blink.

Truth be told,

this may well just be because time slows

when I look at you,

and I hang suspended

in this state.

With no sense when,

or even if,

gravity will return

to make pendulums swing and chronometers tick,

and pull me away from the special place

I inhabit when my soul tangles with yours.