I wanted to love you so badly, I pulled the wool  over my own eyes and I’m sorry I did that and I’m sorry I put the blame on you. I fell in love with you, I will always say that, but I did it with my eyes closed, wishing wishing wishing no one would wake me up.

And so I went through the next phase of my life with my eyes so willfully closed, it’s a wonder I didn’t drown as many times as I walked to the water’s edge. I said it was you I wanted to fill my lungs and choke me and maybe it was, at first, but more than anything else, I didn’t want to open my eyes.

It’s not like that anymore.

I’ve loved him with my eyes open the whole time. I know that I’m doing and it’s a calculated risk--letting myself love someone with all the lights on, with the sun up and coming through my blinds, with all the parts of me I kept deep in the shadows away from you.

They say love is blind. Only if you want it to strike you down, melt your wings, dash you against the rock and the hard place.

They say love shouldn’t hurt and you know what?

It doesn’t. It’s kind and slow and patient and it’s growing like roots around us in my twin bed.

It’s like this: No urgency. No need for labels or roles or fitting into my life like a puzzle piece--he fits where he fits and I can see where he fits with my eyes open. It’s easy in the way you never were. No tripping around him in the dark. No poems about wanting to die by his hand. No torture but the sweet torture of knowing that nothing gold can stay.