It will kill me...

 
I have never been wanted.
Not really.
Not in the way that stays when the night gets too quiet,
not in the way that doesn’t leave bruises,
not in the way that doesn’t make me question
if I was ever meant to be here at all.

I have been the almost, the mistake,
the afterthought in a crowded room.
Hands have reached for me,
but only when they needed something to hold,
only when they were searching for warmth
that wasn’t meant for me.

I have been told I was loved.
But love, as I have known it,
has always come with conditions,
always come with reasons to leave.
I have walked through open doors
just to be pushed back out.
I have pressed my ear to locked ones,
listening for a voice to call me in.
I have spent my life trying to belong,
but every place, every heart,
has been a lie, a joke, a trick of the light.

Until you.

And God—
I don’t know how to put it into words,
but from the first moment,
you felt like something I had spent my whole life
trying to find my way to.

Your love is quiet.
It does not demand,
does not measure,
does not wait for me to prove
that I am something worth keeping.
It just is.
It is steady, soft, whole.
And I do not know what to do with it.

Because I am afraid.

Afraid to speak it aloud,
afraid that the moment I name it,
I will break the spell,
and you will see me for what I really am.
A weight, a ruin,
a body too full of ghosts
to ever be a home for someone like you.

Because you are good.
And I am not worth your time,
or your touch,
or the way your eyes find me
like I am something worth looking at.
But if I don’t say it,
if I keep swallowing this truth,
if I keep pretending I can live
without what you make me feel,
I will die.

Not all at once.
Not in a way anyone would notice.
But slowly.
In the spaces where your voice
should have been.
In the silence where your hands
should have held me up.

But.....

 I know that I cannot keep pretending
that I am not already yours.