how do you love people for who they are?

for everything they cannot give you?

the imperfect answer to a question that seems so simple

yet is it not beautiful that you can never know the answer?

would it not be boring to be given the same answer you had imagined?

everything is slightly off kilter and I find myself

shaking my head as though I might be able to right it

in that simple movement of my chin up and down

as though rotation were easy enough

I am changing and you are changing

and it is at different speeds and we try to hold our changing together

in the intersections of shared glances, analyzing other couples

half bottles of wine and music and the heavy breath before you finish.

all endings and beginnings and you tell me you cannot be what you think it is 

that I want that I need but that is so limiting and boring and

what are we building, your apology incomplete

not what I would have said, but voiced in your own way

and I see, at least now, in this moment: you trying.