The Feeling of Being in Love

Today I really did want to go run outside in the warm January air.
Not hard- just feel the gentle rhythmic mindlessness of my feet plodding one after the other. Music just loud enough to obliterate the sound of my labored breathing. Always on shuffle, because I'm never really in a rush... And because I'm a bit of a fatalist.

But instead of passing, the rain turned into a soft and steady snowfall.
At this point, there was only one thing to do. Crack open the window, turn off everything but our twinkle lights, and curl up on the couch with my favorite down blanket and some e.e. cummings.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

I first discovered this poem when I was a junior in high school, reading ahead in my English textbook.
I know that not everyone has a literary first love. But I did.
(Did you?)

The best thing about poetry is that you never really have to move on.