I say I love you, I crave you, but I could leave in a moment and not return. That all is well between us, then that all is lost. The feelings pour down and drown me in their persistent simplicity, and their contradictions. I am sure you're tired of all the floods too.

There is always a choice to make, and it is never easy. Do I tell you what I feel that day, or what I felt the day before, and what you want to hear? Or maybe I should just say what will inspire you to say the things I want to hear, feel how I want you to feel.

It comes down to one aching image, a blank sheet of paper with a question mark in the middle. I want to keep you naturally, without artifice or plans. But I also want to keep you. Would I shape myself into a lock and key to trap you? I tell myself that you aren't worth keeping, all the while fearing I'm too brittle to change even if I say to hell with it, you are worth any price.

All that and I don't even understand it. This thing, this spark that threatens to turn us to ash -- or me anyway. This sparkling meteor that threatens death and destruction. And I always see all the worst-case scenarios. I believe I'm courting disaster but still want to allow for the possibility of miracles. I want to believe in something, but pick what faces astronomical odds, knowing the risk.

This is love, and this is destruction. Two bodies, souls, become one, and one disappates, expended energy for the other's matter. On some level I must want to disappear.

I always knew this would be a story of loss. Maybe that's what I was looking for from the beginning, at least on some days.

I live a life free from responsibility. No one's welfare but my own depends on whether I leave bed in the morning. If I wanted to take a month-long vacation tomorrow, there would be no plants to water and no cats to feed.

I have money, time, and few obligations (even fewer personal). My decisions are mine to make, and I need no one's approval or consent. My life is my own, completely.

And because of this, it means little.

I'm unanchored, debris thrown around by the winds of any storm or breeze. Not needed, nor depended on, nor desperately wanted. If I disappeared tomorrow, few would care. Life would go on, much the same as it does now, my tiny impact reduced to none.

I hate it.

I think about finding a family, making one. Having a life with people who will make demands of me and expect sacrifices and offer love in return. I imagine returning those feelings, finding the stress and hurt and frustration of those connections worthwhile because they are connections. Because there is meaning in them, because they bind me here and keep me from free-falling through a universe where no duty ties me down.

But I've been gaining momentum all this time, hurtling along in my own orbit. I don't know if anything can keep me now. Maybe I lost the ability to compromise, make sacrifices, and love. Maybe feelings will be always seem like inadequate currency. I'm not sure. But I still want them. They're everything I want now.

I sound so desperate, to myself and those I try to grab when they cross my path.

Save me.
Please save me from this spinning.
Give me something to hold on to.

But gravity pushes me away. Or it pulls you. Anyway, I'll pretend you didn't hear and I didn't say anything. I'll shout back, as I go, how much better it is to be free.