Fallen Stars

   Your socks don't match and your wet hair is leaving a damp spot on the back of your t-shirt and there's a bruise on your left knee, but you're still so beautiful to me.
   "Come to bed, love," I call.
   "In a minute," your exhausted voice answers.
   "You said that an hour ago," I remind you. "Stop working and get some sleep."
   "I know," you sigh. I swing my legs off the bed and to the floor and walk into the study. You're still scribbling away like if you stop, the world will stop spinning, too. I lean over and kiss your temple. You sigh again, but keep writing.
   "You really need to sleep," I say. "You've been in here for half the day."
   You rub your eyes. I take the pen from your hand and, ignoring your weak protests, pick you up out of the chair and carry you to our bedroom. I pull the covers down and set you on the bed.
   "Sleep, love," I insist. "Please." I crawl in next to you and wrap my arm around your waist. You shift closer, put your head down on my chest, and within a minute, you're asleep.
    I don't know what kind of man you've made me, but you are the one and only woman I want to take care of like this for the rest of our lives. It's all I have to offer you and you deserve far more than that, but I will make sure you will have everything. I will give you anything. The stars, if you asked me for them. I'd chase them round and round the Milky Way and put them in glass jars like fireflies. When I have enough to light up the lakeside house we will have, I will look at you and know you're more beautiful than any common sparkling cosmic dust.
    You nestle farther into the blankets and make a little contented humming sound. I stroke your hair and think about the gold band in a small velvet box that's hidden in my drawer of secrets. I still haven't given it to you. It still needs a final touch. Carefully cradling your head and placing it on the pillows, I slide out of the bed and over to the window. It's a cool, clear spring night. I smell cherry blossoms. I climb up onto the window sill and look down. Inhale, exhale. Exhale, inhale. Am I really going to do this? For you, I will do anything. I jump. For a dizzying moment, I feel myself falling. Then my downy wings unfurl and catch the wind and I hurtle up towards the sky. I haven't flown in a while, not since I met you. I promise I'd give it all up for you. But not tonight. Tonight is for something special. I ascend, higher and higher and higher and higher still. Finally, I am in the vast abyss of space, gliding over the marbled Earth. Stars are everywhere, dotting heaven's face like freckles.
   I drift for a while, scanning my surroundings. I see a tiny star, about the size of my pinky nail. I dive for it. It evades me, flitting away like a playful butterfly. There is a frenzied chase around the solar system and I finally catch the troublesome thing hiding under one of Saturn's rings. I sit down on Mars and take the ring I took from the drawer out of my pocket. I carefully set the star into the band. I return it back to its little velvet box and fly back towards Earth.
   The sun is just coming up when I alight on the windowsill. I slip quietly into the bedroom and back into bed. I glance at you. You are still fast asleep.
   I awake to your fingers twining around mine. You are smiling and I think I love you just a little bit more than I did last night. I sit up and take your hand. I didn't know it was possible to feel so scared or so amazed. I ask the question that could either break me into a million pieces or bring me together in a billion different ways. I see your eyes and know that we have forever to count the those ways that are now encompassed here in our hands.
   Your hand is shaking as I place the ring on it. It's home, you say. The ring blazes like a star.