I think I could love you
with everything.
And I do not mean that
in the pretty way people say it.
I mean there would be nothing held back.
No small room in me kept locked
in case I needed somewhere to survive you.
I would love you with the part of me
that notices when your voice changes
by half a degree.
With the part that would remember
which days are hard for you
before you remembered them yourself.
I would love you in the quiet ways.
The glass of water.
The hand at the small of your back.
The knowing when not to ask.
The making space beside me
as though your body had always belonged there.
And perhaps that is why
I cannot do this.
Because I know what I am capable of giving.
I know how far I go
when I love.
There is no shallow end in me.
I have tried to grow one.
I have tried to become someone
who can want without falling toward it,
who can touch something beautiful
without imagining how it might feel
to keep it.
But I am not built that way.
I love like something leaving its body.
And I have spent too much of my life
trying to get back into mine.
So when people tell me
someone will come along,
I do not feel hope.
I feel fear.
Because someone might.
Someone might stand close enough
for all this tenderness
to begin moving toward them.
Someone might make me believe
there is somewhere safe
to put it.
And then I would have to live
with the possibility
of losing them.
Of waking one morning
with all that love still in me
and nowhere for it to go.
I think that would finish something.
So perhaps I will choose the loneliness
I already know.
There is cruelty in it, yes,
but it is a cruelty
with predictable hands.
It does not suddenly decide
it no longer wants me.
It does not kiss me
and then become uncertain.
It does not let me build a future
inside a look
and then ask for the keys back.
Sometimes I think
this is the saddest thing about me:
not that I am alone,
but that I have finally understood
how much I could love someone
and the knowledge of it
has made me afraid
to ever try.
Because if you let me,
I could love you
with my whole being.
And there are nights
when I think I would rather carry
all of that unused love
for the rest of my life
than survive
having nowhere to put it
after you.
