Morning Breath

I heard a mother say once that the sweetest smell she could think of was her baby's breath when she just woke up. Morning breath is disgusting though, isn't it totally repulsive?

I didn't get what the mother said until I lived with my boyfriend. I've kissed him before right after waking up, still thinking "yuck," but I love him so it's a small sacrifice. Waking up next to him in our own house in our own bedroom though, I wanted to take every moment we had and put it in a jar to keep with me.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed. His just-woke-up stupor was slowly lifting away into the air with each deep breath and slight yawn. I curved my still-sleepy body around his. He stretched, arms up and reaching, muscles straining and tensing only to release and sometimes getting caught in the tensing and pinching for a moment. And he fell back onto me. He likes to put his head on my chest right near my neck to hear me breathing. I like to brush his black curls back with my fingers. For a few seconds like that, it feels like the world has completely stopped and the only motion on Earth comes from our lungs breathing and my fingers grazing his forehead.

His lips were on the skin between neck and chest and his breath hit that place in small puffs. If I moved my head the wrong way I could smell his morning breath, and yet it was still so sweet. Because we were in our room, because he is my person and was wrapped up in my arms, beautiful and full of contentment, the smell was bearable and cherished in a way. It was a moment shared only between us in a way that I know no one else will be capable of contending with.

We lingered in the moment a little longer than normal. We watched the sunlight sift through the yellow curtain, against our plant's thick green leaves and over my crystal on the sill which created a rainbow across the wall. The stillness within us was a forever kind of stillness. It was irrevocably our moment.