#respair.

I understand that desire — to be the only one. You're the only one for me. Without you, life would be nothing. I understand wanting to feel necessary. You're my other half. I do not know what I would do without you. I understand wanting a decisive assurance. When I look at you I see a ghost of our past lives, juxtaposed. Right here. When I clench my fist I can feel the string tying us together beneath my nails. But I really do think there is something so precious about wanting without needing, and chance and choice — about being chosen regardless of everything.  I do not need you, but I am going to bother to trace my fingers over your arm when you sleep in mine. Perhaps if we didn't meet I would have met someone else, and I wouldn't have missed you because I wouldn't know you existed. Perhaps I would know, and it still would not matter, because perhaps we wouldn't know one another well. And it would be a shame, in the way all things are. To step into a room is to step out of the other. Without you, life would be more difficult, but I would live. You are not my life– you are not the only thing that occupies it. I have friends that I love deeply, a world I cherish. I could live without you. But I do not want to. We are not half of one another– we are not incomplete without each other. But it is nicer with you. Coming home to you is comfort itself. No matter how my day passes, I wish to tell you all of it, as though you were there with me. I wish to hear all about yours, as though I was there with you. As though we are one being, halved. I do not know of a past life. Nothing about it, if it existed, entices me to listen carefully to the things you say, follow the path your eyes trace over to what attracts you. Nothing about a past life imposes upon me the necessity of loving you again, of bringing you your favorite things, of giving you comfort before you ask for it. But I want to do so regardless– you are here in this life, after all, and I cannot not love you now. I cannot lose you now. There is nothing I want less. I like that. It is better this way.｛We are better this way.｝I wouldn't want this to change.｛We will change together and love one another all the same.｝I hope it stays this way for as long as either of lives.  Even if it does not, we can make peace with one another, no? No matter how, we can stay in each other's lives, yes?  I love you. I love you, regardless of how that love manifests.