Something I should have realized, one thing I know for sure, and some extra words I wanted you to hear straight from me.

I thought about you today. I thought about how you don't hold me tight and about how when I sit next to you so oft' in the car or at dinner or on the porch in the soft yellow porch light that i have to ask to be touched. I thought about how you always make me make the first move in everything. I thought about how you have no interest in promising me forever or in owning me or even in owning your own feelings for me.

I thought about you today and I smiled. There was joy in my heart and a lightness in my step and a twinkling in my eye.

What a joy to be on the same simple page. To be at the beginning of the same simple story, or the end of the same great tragedy. And to be there with you.

To turn to someone at the same time with the same sentiment and the same heart as they are turning to you and speak "Where are we going?" And to answer with your heart or head quietly "Who knows, but isn't it nice here?"

Who Knows.

I thought about you and how quiet you are. And how nothing makes you nervous. How nothing changes your constitution. nothing- except the state of my tires, or when I laugh to hard and start coughing like a stage three TB patient- Nothing worries you or makes you fret or wring your hands. You calmly assess situations and move through with a clear head and Lord only knows what you think when you're silent and alone n your head.

I can't do that. i can't be that. I have to talk. I have to talk so much that i do it (poorly) in four different languages. I have to talk so much that i do it with my hands. On my food. When i sing. In my sleep. With a million pieces of scrap paper and on a thousand wasted web pages. i have to worry and fret and wring my hands gnash my teeth so much so that i wake up in cold sweats always feeling that I have forgotten something. Anything. Lunch. Money. Mom's Birthday. To Clean my Shoes.

I change so much I wear myself out. I change more than I like. Most days I wake up unsure of where my day will begin much less where it will end or who i will be when I make it there. Will I be laughing so hard I can't breathe or crying so hard and so pathetically alone that i can't bear to force my chest up once more. Or sleeping. Or dreaming. Or drawing. Or dancing. or driving. Or walking. Will my day end too late or my night begin to early? Will my glass be half full or will I have it all wasted?

How can you possible stand it? How do you torture yourself by asking me to speak? (which you do, telling me i shouldn't be so quiet what's wrong do I need anything and what am I thinking?) Why? Why do you demand my inconsistencies and incongruities?

Or do you? Maybe somewhere in the vast expanse of your great mind that devours books and find delights in simple jokes and puppy kisses- just maybe you think I'm a babbling idiot. A dolt. A loser with an unsettling upper respiratory issue. Maybe you think i'm a baboon. A joke of a woman with an unnecessarily large vocabulary.

Perchance you view me as a fun project. Someone to talk and take up your time until something better comes along. Some better offer. I'm okay with that.

I'm no longer fostering dreams of marriage and children and family dogs on little leashes and edible gardens in front of my brick false front with a deck made for parties and a Baltimore-ese stoop for which to sit on and talk to passing neighbors and sometimes get a little rowdy all in good fun. I'm no longer looking for a love to shake the very root of me and change me and own me and put me above all other things in the universe. I'm no longer willing or needing to pledge my life's blood and devotion to the love of another.

I want someone to sit with. And drink with. And drive around town. And drag out to silly excursions. And make to buy me ice cream. I want someone who appreciates me, not someone who flatters me. Not someone who tells me what i want to hear, just what they want to say.

I'm not going to thank God for the occasion of meeting you. I would not be devastated tomorrow if you told me you and I were nothing more than pals. I don't miss you when I sleep nor dread the days alone. When I see you my heart doesn't roll with elation. My heart doesn't bob inconsistantly up and down in my chest.

I just simply like you.

I just simply like you as much as you like me.

And isn't that the point anyhow?