Full disclosure, this is not some rain-soaked love poem penned by the frozen fingers of some civil war veteran in 1867, letter carried by postman on horseback seven hundred miles in the snow so his lover would read it and know just how much the photo of her sun-soaked smile folded in his wallet propels him forward one foot in front of the other through every mud-covered mile of this blood-soaked death patrol. How she sparks hope like fire from a gas leak in a rainstorm.
This is not that poem, I've already told you exactly how high I built your pedestal, how rosy red you turn the lens I see the world through, but you were allergic to that flowery bullshit so we put on our garden gloves and pulled those weeds out. We worked through it. Our friendship is a big slab of concrete that snaps every pickaxe I slap against it. I wanted to crack it open and find the gold they wrote about in those old love poems. But I found something better, the most valuable matter ever whispered about in the haunted taverns' gossip circles of long dead treasure hunters. I would trade no other brand of union for this slab of concrete friendship, I am so thankful for what we have.
But it's like this blanket of moss keeps growing on top of it. Not much, I can always scrape it off later, it's just a thin little layer. I stapled on it a reminder not to water it with overthinking or expectations. It doesn't change what we are, it just adds some flavor. I love you as a friend, and also more than that.
And maybe that's just a challenge to the way society attempts to make us limit and compartmentalize the types of affection we can have for each other so that we can only feel one type of love for our friends, and another for our family, for lovers, for teachers, for monarchs. But you are so many things to me all at once. You're a role model and a fairy god-mother and my queen. Serving you is my favorite thing, my greatest pleasure, it illuminates every node on the spectrum of my emotions and compels every kernel of my being. And still, you're more.
You're a healing light, helping me pull from the shadows of my psyche every wounded piece and hold it tight. You don't just make me feel safe, my love for you is a place where my soul can take refuge. You heal the pain from every bad thing that ever happened to me by the simple fact that it all led me to you. And still, you're more.
You teach me nothing short of unconditional love, not just for you, but for myself, because if I can love you despite the fact that you don't feel exactly the way I wish you did, then I can also love myself despite not being exactly what I wish I were. And as I learn to accept our relationship for what it is, rather than comparing it, I also learn to accept myself as I am.
I don't think you're my soulmate, I think you're just so spectacular that I don't need one. I get everything I want just from wanting. I don't love you for what you mean to me, what you could give me, what you represent, no. I love you because you are so undeniably lovable. I used to think it was a bad thing I couldn't turn off these feelings. Try as I might, the pining of my heart will never stop. But I'm starting to see the benefit of feeling such solid consistency. It's not a place where I hold out for hope that one day you'll realize you love me just as much. I'm not that kind of masochist. By contrast, I love myself so much that I don't need to dole out my love only in places where it will be neatly reciprocated in exactly the same flavor and shape. Any pain I feel is a reminder to weed out those expectations. My self-worth does not depend on you, rather I love you because I'm worth too much and I worked too hard not to enjoy happiness in whatever form it chooses to arrive. It is not hope for more that keeps my next foot in front of the other on this brief, exhausting, chaotic journey. It's not a journey at all when I think of you. There's no where else I need to go. My love is a dance floor.
