ignite me, then maybe i'll show my human

there's nothing you look forward to more than the smell of me on your hands as you fall asleep. you told me so, and i bit the inside of my lip to cage in the butterflies. there's nothing i crave so innocently as the smiles simultaneously spreading across our lips when (you think) we're kissing too long.

there's nothing i crave so innocently as you.
and that's important, because the last time i craved anything innocently must have been before 26 august, my sophomore year. 

you, though. you make me feel dizzy and young (like a kindergardener) and bubbling and wanted.
it's what i adore most, that childlike air about you. grey area is nonexistent, as is skipping class, and your blind belief in the goodness of people overpowers anything bad you hear. my, does this act as fire to my ice. (i know we agreed to keep the opposite favors, but in that matter I would be the fire, now wouldn't i?) you melt and soften my Hardened heart. (i'll have you know, it wasn't always so, and sometimes i wish you had been around sooner to prevent the Hardening.)

when you tell me "we are invincible" i smile, kind of wryly, kind of really, and pretend to have fallen asleep because i don't know what to say. that rarely happens, me not knowing what to say, but it does then, because i want to think you are right. it's an alluring thought, having something "invincible," that is. does it even matter the person? but perhaps we are in your unperturbed mind.

i know me better than you do, even though you say you want to know my story. i know if i tell you i will crack, or more likely just shock it a few times over. the person left over after the Hardening is less what you would have loved than what she was before. you would have loved me. i don't love you now, i haven't, i doubt i will, because i've fallen for real before, and this doesn't quite have the makings, but the thought that you would've loved me then feels warm like my rocking chair by the fire. 

i know your fire to my ice (or your ice to my fire, for that matter) can expand me and warm me and even ignite me, but i know what lies beneath my cooled surface, and it's messy. i am ready to feel the reaches of your mind and touch that incandescence you've somehow retained.

but i'm not ready to dim that sunrise, and i am the kind of messy i want never to brush your smile.