I Was Asking to Be Met

I did not need you
to understand every storm in me.

I did not need you
to make the waves stop.

I needed somewhere
the ocean could be ocean
without being told
it was too much water.

I needed my uncertainty
to be allowed to breathe,
without becoming evidence
of who you thought I was.

I needed my tears
without interpretation,
my anger without diagnosis,
my changing without suspicion.

I needed to be heard
without being explained.

There were ways you loved me.

Food placed beside me.
A question about whether I was okay.
The ordinary tenderness
of someone trying to care.

I remember those things.

And perhaps that is why
it took me so long
to understand
why my body was closing.

Because care was there.

And still,
something essential
was missing.

The quiet safety
of knowing that when I said,

this is what is happening inside me,

my words would remain mine.

That you would not turn them
until they meant something else.

That I would not have to stand
in the courtroom of our love
proving the innocence
of my own experience.

So I explained.

And explained.

And somewhere between
loving you
and trying to be understood by you,

I began leaving myself.

My body noticed first.

It stopped reaching.
Stopped softening.
Stopped opening the doors
my mind kept insisting
should still be open.

For a long time
I thought this was failure.

Now I wonder
whether it was wisdom.

A body whispering:

You cannot surrender
where you are defending your reality.

And now
I am no longer asking you
to understand.

I am no longer placing
the tender animal of my inner world
between us
and hoping this time
it will not be examined.

I take her home.

Not hardened.

Not empty.

Not without grief.

Home.

Where anger can be anger.
Grief can be grief.
Uncertainty can remain unanswered
until its own answer comes.

Where I do not have to become smaller
to make another person feel safe.

And where love,
if it comes again,

will not require me
to choose between

being connected

and being myself.