If You’re Going To Love Me, Please Promise Your Permanence
If you’re going to love me, please promise to mean it. Promise those three words that slip from your lips are spoken with honesty and in truth. Promise that your heart is in this—not just your head, not just your wild emotions, not just your physical attraction or the energy running through your veins—but the real parts of you that beat steadily and with certainty. Promise that you won’t just be here for the moment, won’t just be here temporarily, but that you want us and whatever our future holds.
If you’re going to love me, please promise you’ll stay. Promise that you’ll stand by my side through the moments of bliss and despair, of happiness and hopelessness. When we fall from our ‘honeymoon phase’ believing everything each other does is magic, promise that you’ll still search for the pieces of me that make you smile. Promise that you’ll keep trying, even if our spark runs out. That you’ll laugh, that you’ll kiss me back, that you’ll believe in what we had in the beginning, and push through to find who we were, and always will be—so passionately in love.
If you’re going to love me, please promise you’ll fight. With tenacity and spirit, with stubbornness and spark. Promise that you’ll fight against me when I try to push away. Promise that you’ll fight with me—for us, for our relationship. We won’t always be perfect people; we won’t always know how to love and care for each other in the way we need—but promise you won’t run. Promise you’ll still do the little things, that you’ll remind me I’m wanted, as I’ll do the same for you. Promise that you’ll fight to keep us together, to keep us strong, to keep us wild for one another. Promise that you won’t give up.
If you’re going to love me, please promise to believe. In love, in me, in us, in forces beyond our control, in the connection we had and will always have. Don’t let time and circumstance take its toll on us. Don’t let what the world says about broken relationships put a wedge between our hearts. Don’t question whether this is real, whether we are real. Just promise to believe in what you felt in the beginning, what you still feel now, despite the pain that life has put in our path. Promise to believe that we can make it through.
If you’re going to love me, please promise to choose me, to choose us. Because love is a choice, you know. You must choose love every single day. You must choose your person—even when the road narrows, even when doubt clouds your mind, even when every bone in your body wants you to get up and walk away. Please promise to choose what we have and keep fighting for it. Promise to choose my heart, my love, my affection, my commitment to you. And I will choose you right back, no matter what.
If you’re going to love me, please promise your permanence. Promise that you won’t change in the way of the seasons, letting your love fall off and be replaced by another. Promise that you won’t desire to be somewhere else with someone new. Promise that your love won’t fade because you want this, want me, want us, always. In this world of temporary, of convenient, of quick, of easy, of non-committal, promise you will be here, be real, be someone I can call my forever. Please promise you’re not going anywhere. 
Marisa Donnelly is a poet and author of the book, Somewhere on a Highway, available here.
