the chronology of water until now, i have only known how to love like a forest fire. i have burned every love i have ever had to the ground, destroying everything i am to come out of it something else entirely. i have loved with speed, intensity, passion, rage; without boundaries or limits, seeing every disaster through until the very ashen end. but this is not the way i love you; it is not a way you can be loved. you are stones in the ocean, pebbles along the shore, the wet, jagged edges of rock cutting through the tide like knives, disturbing and re-routing it. you are the sound the tide makes as it goes out, a long and deep exhale. i cannot burn through you, but i burn beside you, smoldering beach fires lit through the night, the fire of so many stars shining above you. i am learning to love like water, to allow things to move through and around me, to change me slowly and gently. i am learning to love you with the depth of an ocean, with the warmth of a summer lake, with the adaptability of an old river. i am learning to move around and through you without burning either of us to the ground, and in learning to love you, i am learning to love myself. i am learning what it means to accept, to let go of expectations, to let you and me and this and us be whatever it needs to be in the moment we are in. |