I love you.

I love your eyes, I love the way they twinkle when you smile and spark when you are angry. 

I love your hair, how you hate it when it knots, how you will complain about it forever, but take great offense if someone suggests you should cut it. I love how it smells like mango and peach shampoo.

I love your skin, how it burns so easily. I love how you ask me to put sun cream on your back, the sickly smell mixing with the gritty beach sand. How you have a tiny birthmark on your shoulder, and how it looks like an elephant tusk or a sickle moon. 

I love your hands, rough with callouses that don't match with the boring desk job you have. How they are chapped, and your fingernails are always cut short, and black with grease or something to do with nature.

I love how you cook on Sundays, and how you always overdo the pancakes slightly, but how they always tasted like summer. I love how you somehow smell like new books and mud and rainy days all at once.

I love how when you laugh it sounds like a child, and how when you smile through your tears, it makes my heart break into stardust and coffee.

I love how you looked in white. How you wore a Regency-era dress, embroidered with red, and tied together with ribbons. How you gave me two yellow tulips because you said they meant undying love. I love how you were crying before you even arrived at the alter. How your voice shook and sounded like an evening breeze when you said 'I do'.

I love how beautiful you are, how you chew your lip when you concentrate. How your socks never match and how you insist on keeping all the chopsticks from our many Chinese takeaways. I love how you make everything that is ugly, beautiful. How you always lick the icing off first. I love how when you wake up your eyes are puffy and your skin creased, but how you still look like a goddess.

I hate how pale you are now. How there are tubes attached to your too thin arms. How a monitor is beeping beside you. How the doctors are thin-lipped and impassive.

How they say there is a slim chance of you ever waking up.

I hate this. Because I love you too much to lose you.

I love you.

Please wake up.