It's the confidence in the touch. Before, it felt that every time, I was asking, he was asking. Politely. Ashamed. Unused to the closeness. Now my hands rest perfectly on the spaces between his fingers, knowingly. As I trace the line of his jaw or the string of his spinal cord down his back, the electricity is the same but the confidence is other. It's like returning home. You know the rooms, you walk in at ease, accustomed but relieved, because you are safe.

I never thought I needed this; it was not a priority. And, when his lips searched mine for the first time, famished and burning, my own hunger surprised me. How can you be waiting for something all your life without realising it? He made my needs change; he sent the boredom away. Now, when I am restless and angry, searching for ways of distracting myself, he will hold my hand and pull me to a safer place. He replaced the racing of my mind, substituted it with a furiously beating heart.

He likes to sleep on his side and when he wakes up at three a.m. he reaches for me. He doesn't remember it in the morning. His body temperature decreases fast when he falls asleep and I get closer. He doesn't notice it. He doesn't have to.

The familiarity was supposed to make it dull; instead, it is a reward. My heart is never full and I comprehend now that it can never be, because the heart does not work like a regular container. The heart can always take more, and more, and more. And he keeps giving. We keep exchanging.

I'm used to be the genius, and yet, I knew nothing of this. I couldn't tell if he would like me to touch him in a certain way and I sure was unaware my body could feel so much, want so much. He discovered my places with his lips and hands, with his body. I discovered why it matters so much.

There is thankfulness in the way you make tea and taste it before giving it to the other, to make sure it tastes good. There is reward in giving without expecting anything in return. Silence can say so much and be so quiet. A good kind of quiet. Sometimes we talk, sitting across from each other and our eyes speak so many words our mouths never pronounce. The language of lovers is real and I have the proof. I don't need a lab or a coat or a microscope, and most of all I do not have – or want - to prove it to anyone. We both hold the secret and it's enough.

I never understood how one can cling to someone's clothes and take in the scent, but now I pick up his pyjamas when he leaves our bed early and I breathe it in, as if the odour was palpable, made of all his particles, and he was still there by my side. I have become a stranger to myself. I don't mind.

My and his things became our things and I never thought it possible to share and still keep my own individuality. He does not take unless I want to give; he complements me when I was sure to be complete.

Sentiment is a chemical defect found in the losing side. I am losing. I see no defect in that.