Fragments of Cassandra

There is a peculiar kind of grief
in loving a man  who spends every day
trying to become the person
you already see.

You speak of him often.

The man I deserve.

The one who will love me without hesitation.
Without fear.
Without wondering if he is enough.

You speak of him as though 
he is someone I have not yet met.

And I never know how to tell you
that every time you describe him,
you are only changing
your own name.

Maybe you think I have fallen in love
with the man you might become.

But I did not fall in love with tomorrow.
I fell in love with the man
who instinctively reaches for me
when the road begins to shake;

as though every bump
is something
he can spare me from.

The man whose eyes soften
before his smile ever does.

The man who remembers
the smallest pieces of me,

as if nothing I have ever said
was too insignificant
to carry home with him.

Before you,
I spent years 
mistaking survival for living.

I became accustomed to being admired
only until someone better arrived.

To being held
without ever being kept.

I learned to shrink
before anyone could ask me to.

Then you looked at me
with such impossible gentleness

that my soul,
for the first time,

forgot it had been bracing
for abandonment.

Do you know 
what you have done to me?

You have made it impossible
to return to a life where I pretend
I have never been seen.

You tell me
that you are not ready.

That you cannot choose me
until you become the man I deserve.

As though love is a destination.

As though healing was never meant
to have witnesses.

As though homes are only built
after every brick has already been laid.

But I have never understood
why you insist on rebuilding yourself alone,

when I have spent this entire time standing beside you with my sleeves rolled up.

Love is about 
taking that leap of faith.

But,
You study the distance.
Measure the wind.
Wonder whether the fall
will break us.

And all this time,
you have mistaken me for the ground.

I have only ever wanted to be the arms
waiting to catch you.

You tell me I deserve certainty.
But certainty,
to me,

has never meant loving someone
who already knows exactly who they are.

Certainty

is looking at someone
whose hands still tremble,
whose heart still doubts itself,
whose past still follows him home;
and choosing him anyway.

Not because he is finished.
But because I never asked him to be.

Sometimes

I think the cruelest part
is that you believe you are protecting me.

You cannot see that every step
you take away from me

is another way of asking me
to survive a life I no longer wish to imagine.

Still,
if tomorrow you arrived
with nothing except the man
you already are;

I would not ask what took you so long.
I would not ask whether you had finally
become enough.

I would only wonder how many years
you spent searching for the person
I had been loving all along.

So I will remain here.

Not because I have nowhere else to go.
Not because I cannot live without you.

But because
once a soul has finally been witnessed;

truly,
completely,
without needing to become smaller;

it cannot un know what home feels like.

And if one day you discover
that love was never asking you
to become someone else;

only to believe what I have been telling you
since the beginning;

you will find me
exactly where you left me.

Not waiting for a better man.
Only waiting for you to believe me.



Be’ahava,
The Mourning Bird