I orbit you. Your pull creates my gravity. To become untethered from you is to drift into the vast black void.
I adore you. Your mistakes are already forgiven. Your faults are no more serious than anyone else’s. I love loving you. Serving you gives me air to breathe and ground to feel under my feet.
I need you. I don’t know what me is without you. You aren’t my end or beginning. You are all of it. You give me safety, and your absence means danger.
I mirror you. Your bad day becomes mine. Your depression becomes grafted onto my heart and into my brain. I’m possessive of your crises—they are mine, too, and must be solved together.
I consume you. I cannot ever tell you but you’re my nicotine, my Adderall, my focus and fixation. You are finite, and my consumption depletes my supply; too much poses an existential threat to both my existence and yours.
I fear you. I convince myself I am irreplaceable. But you do not need me, nor do you even want me. You want someone like me. Someone present to walk with you into dark rooms, and order the right flowers on the right days.
I need to let you go.