“The Burden of an Endless Love”
When you tell me
you feel yourself becoming someone else
just to keep me,
my heart wants to understand
what you’ve been carrying in silence,
what you have kept deep
in the chambers of your heart,
what remains hidden
in the dark moments of your soul.
Is it something I’ve asked of you
within our intimacy,
or something deeper:
somewhere in our relationship
where you’ve felt you needed to change?
Have you found yourself
reshaping pieces of who you are
to meet my expectations,
or doing things that don’t truly feel like you
because a quiet fear whispers,
If I stop,
will he lose interest in me?
Will his heart still cling to my soul?
And when you speak of becoming someone else,
I want to ask you gently:
Does any part of that feeling
come from the way I craft words in ink,
like a poet,
or the way I perform behind
a smiling mask?
I hope that isn’t
what I have become.
I’m not asking to put you on trial.
I’m asking because I want to understand
the fear you have been carrying
and meet you there with honesty.
I want a love
where neither of us has to disappear
to make the other stay.
Because I never want loving me
to cost you pieces of yourself.
I want the woman you are
when nothing needs to be proven,
when nothing needs to be performed,
when you can simply breathe
and know you are enough.
I want you,
the woman you choose to become,
the character you write for yourself,
not one written with the poet’s unmeasured words,
nor one imagined by a careless heart.
I want to know
who you are
when you no longer have to become
someone else:
someone who divides
the connection of our souls.
I want to know
the woman who remains
when the performance is over,
when the mask falls away,
when there is nothing left to prove
and no one left to please
but yourself.
And if I am honest,
perhaps I need to know
who I am, too.
I don’t want to know you
as an experiment.
I want you,
not a version of you
born from the fear
that I might leave.
