To My Valentines

A Valentine Beyond Love

Opps. 

I have just discovered that

your Valentine is too small for what I feel.

Not just because my love for you is growing—

but because the boundary between us

keeps dissolving.

Yesterday I wept at your friend's fever

though she and I have never met.

The ache settled in my chest

as if my own bones were burning.

Tell me: Where does your suffering end

and mine begin?

I have tried to love you exclusively—

to draw a line around us like a stone wall,

but doors keep appearing in the wall.

A woman on the street passes—a door opens.

My enemy speaks—a door opens.

Now there are more doors than wall,

more portals than boundary.

This is the truth—

not that nothing matters

but that the mattering

extends in every direction infinitely.

We think solidity makes things real.

A firm handshake.

The satisfying click of a lock.

But hearts don't meet in solidity—

They collide and break apart.

Real meeting requires

permeability,

an admission that I can no longer tell

where my breath ends

and yours begins.

On this Valentine's Day I want to give you

something bigger than a promise.

I want to give you

every failure of my imagination

to experience us as not in love.

I want to give you

the experience of how your slightest pain

shows up in my body.

I want to give you

the haunting knowledge

that I cannot look at

anyone's face

without seeing

some version of yours.

This is my Valentine to you—

and to the woman on the corner,

and to the man who cut me off in traffic this morning,

and to the child I will never meet,

dying in a place whose name I wish I could pronounce.

For as long as space endures,

for as long as living beings remain,

so then may I too abide, beloved,

with you,

in love with you.