Do I love you or Do I want to be you?

Do I love you or do I want to be you?

That is the question I’m left with.

As I transition my space back into my own..

Doing the laundry and setting calendar reminders–I wonder if I know what love is.

All those identifiers. The mounds of characteristics I placed on to you.

On our experience together.

Working to bend the words in the correct way.

A way that explains how I love you.

Because I love you.

“But?”

But I fear you.

The way you refuse to make yourself small.

How you say exactly what you want with no worry of how you’re perceived.

When you give a little and the universe meets you with the rest.

Perhaps I am in awe of you.

Stunned by a life suited for me and you the blueprint of how to carry it.

I think I want to be you.

Or at the very least I want to switch bodies with your essence.

Like the last day in October, I want to wear your fashion.

More than your dress, more than your taste, more than your smell.

Show me everything.

Am I in love with you?

I do love you.

That’s not what you asked.

You saved me from hurt when I met you.

And you kept saving me.

As many times as I did my best to give way to simplicity and low expectations, you forced my hand.

Refused to accept past versions of myself.

Defaming her.

Leaving me to ask, “whom shall I be?”

“Who I want you to be.”

So you create me.

As much as my ego will allow, I hear you.

I shift. I grow.

How could this not be love?

Is love a competition?

Why am I trying to win?

Not to beat you.

But to not need you.

Taking traits from you as I ascend.

Never seeming to get off the ground.

You have to leave.

Without you there would be me.

Leave because your presence only blocks me.

Leave because how can love say that?

How can love be so cruel?

How can she weaponize vulnerable information?

When does love argue in a restaurant and fight downtown?

Leave because I woke up to me.

Appreciation dwindling with every past that I am still myself.

Another moment where life could be easier.

Or more challenging.

Whatever feeling lends the most validation in this sequence.

But what if I kept you?

Would you let me destroy you?

Let me merge our souls till they are condensed into a better version of me?

Could I be you?

Would you authorize your existence to me so that I feel more seen?

If only to myself?

Give yourself over.

“I shine you shine.”

Then let me shine for us both.

Releasing myself from all implications of what does not exist.

Letting go of your own existence.

Insecurities fading with the last zipping of my being into you.

I thought I loved you.

And now there is no going back.