I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

I love your potential.

I love your dreams and aspirations.

I love your motivation

And your sense of duty and sacrifice.

I love what you have made of your life,

And I love your story.

I love your perseverance and strength.

I love your resilience.

And I love your stubbornness.

But sometimes,

Sometimes

I love you

From afar.

Sometimes the light I love so much

Burns a little too brightly

And I don’t want to be burned

Again.

I learned this the first time your light

Licked the edges of my spirit

And your shadow

Weighed heavily on my soul.

I love you.

But, for my sake,

I love you

Sometimes means

From a distance.

Because if I’m too close,

You sometimes leave me

Burned

In places I don’t know how to fill,

How to fix,

How to recover from.

Because of this,

I love you

Has to mean

I love you But.

I love you,

But right now

I will love you

From over here.

If I don’t,

I will always wonder

Why I seem to grieve

For a piece of my heart

I can’t fix.

For a vision

Never realized.

For a wisp of a shadow

Of a dream

Unable to be reality.

Sometimes I wish

For something I can’t have

I yearn for someone

I will never have

And I cry for the person

You buried

Hid

Locked away.

I love you.

Every side

Facet

Secret

Quirk.

But I love you

Wasn’t meant to weather

Everything.

So I will love you,

But I’ll do it from over here.