Take me to the desert, take me to the sands, show me the colour of your right hand.

I defy anyone to say you are not beautiful. You're not a page three bimbo. I think you're lovelier. There's no harsh pneumatic edge to you (though, by day, you're locked in tight and so strict, but at night, you're blurred and vulnerable). I want to follow the lines of your face; cheekbone, nose, rounded chin and the socket round your eye. You went to bed after studying for hours tonight, and I am looking at you asleep in our bed. I'm prolonging the moment of sliding between the sheets next to your body. You could be dreaming of all kinds of things, of someone that's not me, of anything.

Your mouth is open a little bit, but you don't dribble. I do. I've always wondered how you keep it all in. Your hand is feathered out, palm up on the pillow. Here I am arranging you with words, posing you like a shop window mannequin, but I can't help it. Consumer voyeurism and provider, all in one. Maybe I'm making you up. I flip through the other things I like about you; earnest intelligence, the way you're so bookish in your glasses, hunching over six books, the way you surprise me time and time again with little gestures, and your bossiness. But I like you like this too. Soft and silent, private at night time. Just you and me. Your blonde eyelashes flutter and you shift under the covers. You murmur, 'come to bed. It's cold.' Do you mean cold without me? I get in and loop an arm round your shoulders. There's a rustling as you take my hand and pull me further into you. Most nights I fall asleep with your head on my chest, and one of your hands on my breast. It feels soothing, like you're keeping me safe and slowing me down. I don't know that I could sleep without it. I hate hearing my own heart, feeling it beat through the bone in my chest, far too visceral and close, but you don't seem to mind. In return, I stroke the nape of your neck and kiss your forehead. The light comes in through a chink in the curtains and a car goes past, and the world outside feels large. We settle into each other.

I like your pyjamas. You've never gone in for negligees or anything silly like that; it's always been flannelette, and you look lovely. I creep a hand under the material to feel the top of your hip. When I hold you, you feel warm and safe and well packaged- there's no other way to describe it- and I can hold you without crushing you, and you look so clean, so tanned and scrubbed. You let down your hair (another thing you never do in company) and we can sit for hours. There's a noise you make in the back of your throat- a sound halfway between n and m- and that means that you're happy. Your eyes are closed and you're making it now.

Or, like tonight, I can creep into bed and curl myself around you as if I'm a second blanket, and you wriggle to shift your hips to latch into mine. That's how I know that you feel the same; even half asleep, you want to be closer. It's reassuring because for the longest time, when we were friends, I thought you would prefer me to be further away. I think you're asleep but you unbutton your top, and I unbutton mine to unsheath my arms, and we lie flesh against flesh together. I always worry I'll spear you with my collarbones, but you never make any complaint. Sometimes you say you worry you'll flatten me, but nothing could be further from the truth. Tonight you are sniffing the place where my neck joins my shoulders.

'Just memorising you'.

You didn't need to explain to me.

'I can feel you smiling in your tendons'.

You're right. I touch my lips to your hair again. You're the only person I'll allow to touch my neck, because I hate it when most people touch me there. We're the only two people who are able to touch each other here, in the dark. There's a whole list of songs I've heard that are about you, all about you. "Love is hot and love is cold, I just want someone to hold". "What a beautiful face I have found in this place". "Your prettiness is seeping through, out from the dress". "A Sunday Smile, we wore it for a while". "Will you say to them, when I'm gone, I loved your son for his sturdy arms". They're all for you dear. Vaguely wistful slow sounding songs with a joyous note and bright lyrics. I say the lyrics into your yellow hair.