Rely on me, you say,
like it is as simple as leaning.
Like my body has always been a place
people could rest without falling through.
No, I say.
Rely on yourself.
Because if you rely on me
you might learn my oldest religion:
the prayer that sounds like
please do not need me.
It is not that I do not love you.
It is that I love you so hard
it scares me into survival.
My fear has a megaphone.
It screams:
What if I am not enough.
What if I make a home and then burn it down
by blinking at the wrong time.
What if the only thing I am good at
is leaving first.
I learned to live like a locked door
and call it strength.
I learned to carry my own darkness
and call it freedom.
I learned to swallow the words
before they could become a promise.
And then you show up
with your soft insistence,
your ******* against my ribs,
your face saying,
I see the way you flinch from care
and I am not here to punish you for it.
I would give myself to you.
Bleed for you.
Lay everything on the table
until it looked like a confession.
Because the truth is
I am brave in the way people get brave
when the thing in front of them
finally matters more
than the fear inside them.
You say we should get tattoos that say:
Rely on me.
And I feel my mouth start to form
its familiar no.
But you laugh,
not cruelly,
just accurately.
You change it to:
Rely on we.
Because you know me.
Because you know the difference between
a rescue and a partnership.
Because you are not asking me
to be the whole roof.
Just a beam.
And you, too.
And suddenly my body understands
a new way to stand:
not alone.
Not carried.
Held,
with hands on both sides.
Dec 18, 2025
Dec 18, 2025 at 5:08 PM UTC
Rely on me, you say,
like it is as simple as leaning.
Like my body has always been a place
people could rest without falling through.
No, I say.
Rely on yourself.
Because if you rely on me
you might learn my oldest religion:
the prayer that sounds like
please do not need me.
It is not that I do not love you.
It is that I love you so hard
it scares me into survival.
My fear has a megaphone.
It screams:
What if I am not enough.
What if I make a home and then burn it down
by blinking at the wrong time.
What if the only thing I am good at
is leaving first.
I learned to live like a locked door
and call it strength.
I learned to carry my own darkness
and call it freedom.
I learned to swallow the words
before they could become a promise.
And then you show up
with your soft insistence,
your ******* against my ribs,
your face saying,
I see the way you flinch from care
and I am not here to punish you for it.
I would give myself to you.
Bleed for you.
Lay everything on the table
until it looked like a confession.
Because the truth is
I am brave in the way people get brave
when the thing in front of them
finally matters more
than the fear inside them.
You say we should get tattoos that say:
Rely on me.
And I feel my mouth start to form
its familiar no.
But you laugh,
not cruelly,
just accurately.
You change it to:
Rely on we.
Because you know me.
Because you know the difference between
a rescue and a partnership.
Because you are not asking me
to be the whole roof.
Just a beam.
And you, too.
And suddenly my body understands
a new way to stand:
not alone.
Not carried.
Held,
with hands on both sides.
A poem about the reflex towards self reliance, and the way love can ask for something gentler than rescue: partnership. It’s written from the place where devotion and fear live in the same body. “Rely on we” is the turning point for me: not being the whole roof, just a beam, held on both sides.
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