i. Here, there is sand in your mouths when you kiss. Sweat and long hair. A shared water bottle glinting in her hands. She finds a succulent plant and slices it open, drawing her finger through the clear gelatinous discharge it bleeds. She touches that finger to her cheek and glistens heavenly. You are dry heat desire and she is your oasis. You drink her with stinging eyes.

ii. In this place of neat grass and gridlocked streets, there is not much to do except make chains of wildflowers for her neck and yours. There’s no one around to hear you tell each other how you feel. You feel like a sparkler, so you say so. Like a lit match. Condensed brilliance. She holds your hand in the middle of paved suburban wasteland, squeezes it three times. You know what she’s saying. You say it back.

iii. She draws your initials in condensation clinging to subway glass, while you thunder beneath the metropolis in claustrophobic darkness. You can’t see all of her in the changing light, just fragments. Her lower lip. Her nose. Her jaw, holy. The city makes your want electric. Her mouth on the edge of a cheap coffee cup and crowds jostling the two of you together. Curry and gasoline and the sapphire smell of her hair. Adoration in alleyways and open streets. Here, you can be two girls in love and the world will not punish you for it. Here, you blow her a kiss and a bearded old man says che dio ti benedicta. Bless you.

iv. To love her in the mountains is dizzying. High altitudes and mist. Leaves caught in her hair. When you stand at a precipice and look out, she photographs you without you noticing, dilating the lens to catch the rosy burn of your cheeks above your wool scarf. She finds you painfully becoming like this. You against the violent, beautiful sky. You in love and unhidden. Her heart is thumping as fast as yours when you turn and move into her, wrapping her up as if she were some ephemeral thing, a moonbeam from a passing orbit. Together, you breathe the thin blue air.