Note: Some words are harder than others to pronounce, harder even to mean sincerely. This piece was among one of the hardest for me to write because the words just weren’t forming the way I imagined them in my head. As a result, I’ve been continually putting off finishing it. But at the same time, I kept feeling compelled to do so.
More than a poem, this is something that I’ve been trying to say for a long, long time. And still, I have doubts whether I’m saying anything at all.
I love you like a confession.
When I say this to you,
I am not telling you.
I am admitting a fact,
disclosing an intimate secret
that is not really a secret.
But every time the words
leave my lips, this is the shape
they take: quiet and careful.
Words that do not wish to harm
you, but rather to heal you.
They are words that want to
make you soup on cold days,
hold you close, make you feel safe,
and give you all the time, comfort,
and support that you should ever need.
These words are hands that reach
through phone lines and towers
and satellites and concrete walls
and distracted drivers in sleepy cities,
to put a finger on a shaking lip,
to work out the knots in the back
of your neck after a long, terrible day.
I can feel something quiver
inside me at their utterance,
a strange shiver harping my spine.
Three words become music that I
never learned how to play.
But I play on.
“I love you” - beyond words,
it’s performative speech.
It is “doing” more than “telling,”
an action between nouns,
the most profound verb
to ever grace a living being.
Sometimes, I am so afraid of
those words put together,
of what they really say and the
kind of power they hold.
They and their meaning are as
much of a mystery to me as you are.
Perhaps that is why they fit you
better than on anyone else.
I love you to the point where it hurts
because I keep confessing and
confessing and confessing.
Admitting that I am my strongest
in my weakness, that weakness
makes me weak less and that
vulnerability is a lesson
in slowing down, learning
to appreciate little things.
Like imperfections,
and mispronounced words,
and each of our own
excruciating reactions to spiders.
I love you from the ground up.
First realistically, then irrationally.
Fantastically. Completely.
To the point where I want to
keep confessing, over and over again.
Because I know with all of my being
that this is the most absolute truth
I will every tell in my whole life.
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