I feel to have to leave

Every time I see you, I fall in love all over again. It's as if I am seeing you for the first time, saying I love you for the first time, each and every time. I look into your eyes and it is once again like the first time I held your gaze. I want to cry every time you draw me close, press my head to your shoulder, and kiss the top of my forehead. I want to cry because I couldn't be more happy or more afraid or more conflicted than I am with you. It is all so simple and complex all at once. I can not even begin to understand this paradox or the way that it manages to work, but it does. Each and every time, over and over again, it works. It happens the way it is supposed to. It's like deja vu day after day. Hearing you speak, feeling you brush your fingertips across my face, reaching out to trace the curve of your mouth, all seems fresh and new each time. Each time I feel clumsy and awkward in this body, but each time I feel comfortable with myself, as if I am as graceful and slender as a willow.

I could stand before you without shame or worry that you wouldn't love every inch of me. I don't worry that you won't because I know that you do, and yet even that makes me even more afraid. I become more and more afraid that you are only a dream, something that I can hold on to desperately, that I can keep for a while, but eventually it will fade and disappear from my hands like smoke. If only I could find some way to sew you to my side so that I would never have to let go of you. I love your warmth, I love it when you are near me. Even standing next to you, standing close but not touching, is a tormenting agony because I feel so cold without you. I feel as if part of me is being drawn out and away with you, and as if that part is the best part of me. Which is why it is so hard to say goodbye when the time comes. Especially when you look so equally sad to see me leave, as I feel to have to leave.