If You’re Wondering Why I Haven’t Written About You

It’s because you are real.

Because I can reach out my hands and touch your skin and I don’t have to imagine — the way your eyes might light up when you feel passion, or what you taste like on a Saturday morning. Because you’re solid – made of flesh and bone and intricacies, which I didn’t invent nor can I alter.

I haven’t written about you because you’re not a poem.

You’re not a figment of my wild imagination.

You’re not a dusty book I pull out on a lazy Friday evening that I dog-ear and re-read because I need to escape from what’s in front of me.

You’re in front of me.

I don’t need to bridge the distance with my mind.

If you’re wondering why I haven’t written about you, it’s because I don’t need to.

Because I do not need to re-frame this story to convince myself that you are more handsome or more daring or more in love with me than you really are. Because I couldn’t write a plot that reads this way, even if I tried.

Because the real story keeps coming out better.

Because we don’t need to invent a happy ending.

Because this chapter, this page, this sentence, is one I could re-read forever. Because even the lulls in our story remain fascinating.

I haven’t written about you because I don’t want to ruin you.

I don’t want to reinvent you as someone without your natural flaws – the way you don’t know when to stop giving, the places your mind goes where I can’t access.

I don’t want to make you a character, a scripted line, a trope.

I want your humanity – your strong hands and your mind and your mistakes.

I haven’t written about you because I don’t want you to become another story.

Another person it didn’t work out with. Another reality I need to reinvent.

I haven’t written about you because the real person you are is already enough.

And quite honestly, I couldn’t have possibly dreamed up someone better.