I'm only going to hold your hand lightly, plant kisses on your forehead when you're distracted, give you the gifts you ask for and some of the ones you don't. I'm gonna fuck up noticing when you lean away, or shy away from a certain touch. I'm gonna lean myself into you when we're sitting together.
I'm gonna forget you exist. You might see glimpses of me fixated on the twinklings on the other side, you might see me walking among the momentary streams. you might see me tracing the curves of the hills we live on, you might see me watching the way a squirrel bounces along them. i won't see you;
then you'll turn away, and find someone tugging on your hand to show you something. you'll be dragged back through those places, and more, with my voice accompanying the whole way. In my sketchbook, a squirrel's arched body, its tail's faint halo drawn in striking detail; the hills and the far-off lights assembled carefully to point towards a day's moon. The springly sunshower, here among the greyed trees. And finally, here and there some giggling, until I look at you, and there's a kiss.
I'm not going to say I love you. I don't love you. I've tried loving before; but I can't sit still long enough. I can't really focus on another person like I'm expected, not for long periods. I have to see the hills. I have to disappear into places no one will find me. I can't afford to feel guilty while doing it.
So hopefully, this is a substitute for love you can be okay with. The one that calls you "friend" and "dear" affectionately, that appears every once in awhile, distantly, to show you what I'm up to. I'm not always going to be what you want, or what you need. But even so, even I need to be kissed and held sometimes.
for what's embedded in my core.
Often, it feels like a device is inserted there. It feels like the blood doesn't flow in the ways it should. When the tides are most extreme, they pull on what's in my heart, I feel it so strongly. My beat is regular, and it acts as I expect. I might pant, but I will feel the exhiliration of walking uphill with you. I'll kiss you when we reach the top. My blood will flow as it should and all will be right with me.
When the moon is precisely sliced, so too is my heart. There's a polyrhythm in my veins. There's an ebb and flow that resembles the sea's cycles much more strongly, when the tides struggle to move their waters. If I see you, I'll see a mere person. I'm not supposed to see a mere person, am I? I'm supposed to see someone else. I'm supposed to
I'm supposed to love you.
I don't love you, I think. I just think you make me feel better. I use you to make me feel better. I'm the selfish that is the pursuit of pleasure. When it's convenient for me. Pursuit of pleasure is antithetical to love and to community? Right? I shouldn't seek knowledge. I should only seek you. It's a moral feeling that I have to lie to do it.
The people I've been with in the past have been ones I've lied to. Is there even another option? Love meets love; If there's not love, and it meets love? It can only mean that the lover is betrayed.
...
I tell you this. You say this is bullshit. You tell me I don't quite know the full extent what love is.
Love is when you have a normal, sometimes. It's when your normal can be found in another, you tell me. It can be when our lines pass through each other, halfway, as the sun and the moon's do in these times. it can be quiet, and it can be gentle. It can be ambivalent. Comfortable. Self-serving. When my self extends past me to you, when in my selfishness I become otherful. When I indulge and we're better for it. When high tide and low are mere inches apart.
I'm still not going to say "I love you too". I don't say things when I don't mean them.
But that's love too.
And the syzygy of sun, of land, of moon, will come again. And even, on occasion, the moon will red, or the sun will darken. A rare occasion to be cherished.
