love without shape

I used to think that love was presenting myself as labeled chunks, easy to swallow and ready to be spit out. I thought it was keeping up a constant output of customized appearances, and being loved back was being told that this filtered reflection of me was to their liking. Even in friendships or family ties, I assumed that to connect as a human was to strip down my being until I was easy to understand. Because of that, I thought that the parts of myself that I couldn't understand could never be loved, because how could I expect someone to love what I can't even define? So I accepted that my most complex thoughts and deepest layers would never be able to be contemplated or admired, because love was giving up the truth of your deepest self and burying it under the concept of settling for shallow contentment.

But I love now, and I was wrong. Love is listening to every song on his playlist, watching his favorite shows and movies, examining every item in his room, studying how he touches his chin when he thinks and squints his eyes when he sleeps, listening intently when he talks and then going back to reread the conversation so I can absorb every word. Love is thinking I know who he is because I spend every second with him trying to know him — but then love is realizing that there’s no guarantee we’ll make it through till we’re older, and even if we last some years, the first part of his life was lived without any knowledge of my existence, much of it will be lived with me existing in his mind but not physically next to him, and the final part might be him forgetting about me completely. But even if I could spend more than a tiny fraction of his time next to him, I would never be able to live in his body and feel every emotion wash over him and process his thoughts through his brain built from his pain and values and past, and I am so horribly limited in knowing him. Yet I feel for every time he got to feel, so I will try as hard as I can to learn how he walks through life so I can take his hand and walk through it by his side. Love is the emoji he just sent me, one I use all the time, that makes it clear to me that I am a part of the world that I spend so long beholding. Love is being unable to even begin to express how much he means to me, but we can sit in silence because the closest description for what I feel for him is felt in the empty space between us and not in the words that seem too limited to illustrate everything that he is. Love is realizing that he could cut himself into whatever shape he wanted to and lie about the missing pieces, but I would still admire most everything that he tries to hide, without understanding why he would ever want to hide it.

He asked me if I will still love him when he is old, and I wish I could explain that when our skin is rotting and thin I will just be grateful that I can feel him even closer to his core. I’ve found someone who sees me for more than just what I try to put out, someone who can respond to my most weighted fears but also love me until my soul feels light, someone that sees past all the layers, whether I like him to or not, and somehow stays despite what he sees there. I have never been this open and I am scared but I am the most filled with love I’ve ever been. 

I am water in his hands and I've never been this beautifully shapeless before.