you love to watch

the boys at play, especially the ones that fare tall and strong. Their glass-cutter jaws and crooked noses molded into beautiful masculinity as they grin at friends and flip jokes at each other with ease, tumbled words and swallowed each other's thoughts. It delights you to watch that joy slide down their long throats, especially in the summer when they loosen up with tank tops and deep v's, lightly dampened fabric that betrays the delicate lines of collarbones you'd love to trace your finger over. Such vulnerability placed against the virtues of virility. The bone exposed, much like your own. It beckons to something tender within you that sleeps more often than not, engenders a sense of affection that softens them and attracts you.

Sometimes you would see one on the subway, solitary, head bowed over a book and you thought your heart might just burst from it: the furrow of a brow, a lip gently chewed, the slope of a back at ease. You were always alone back then. You dreamt of sliding next to them to take their hand in innocence, where together you might look upon the world and find it suddenly more beautiful.