Your eyes, painted pictures, on the canvas, that was my body. Drawing out lines of laughter, frowning wrinkles and greying hairs with invisible paint. You drew out a map of my heart. The arteries and veins, created roads and bridges, upon which your name ran and danced. The blood flowing through the rivers of my body, gushed and laughed at the mere sound of you, the smell, the sight.

They said that love couldn’t be found within crinkled letters or pressed flowers. That it couldn’t be captured in clothes and perfumes. But I found myself falling deeper and deeper each time I opened a new envelope with scrawling handwriting or smelt the tangy yet sweet fragrance emanating from your skin.

Your hands were like sunshine on my skin on a cold winter morning. And the long lock of your hair that fell on my woollen purple sweater was a souvenir I didn’t feel the need to pick off.

They said that love was accepting you when you woke up looking disheveled after a night of nightmares. But I found I liked you better when you were asleep, when you couldn’t control the mess in your hair or the slightly open lips and content sighs that escaped from them. They said that you could fall in and out of love even if it did take time. But I find myself staring at the clock every time you leave after we fight, waiting for the hands to turn to the time where you walk back into the room ready to forgive me.

Your smile, lights up every room when it flashes across your face, fleetingly. Your laugh the music to which I could dance through the night. And when you danced sometimes off beat, sometime with stunning grace, the whole world stopped to stare, not because it made them laugh, just because they were mesmerised by the way your hair and body moved to the beat with careless fluidity.

They said that love was more than every other being and force in the world. That it wasn’t controllable. That it couldn’t be captured. But I found myself falling in love every time you and I were happy. I found myself capturing it and bottling it up in the crevices of my body and memory to hold on to. I found that love didn’t really have any rules and that I was writing love in the diary of my heart with ink made of tears, memories and the very essence that was you and me.