this year, I want to love you

by

the best way I know how, and try to remember that it is different from
your best way, or anybody else’s. This year, I want to love you not
desperately or impulsively, but thoughtfully and purposefully, the way one
would water something healthy and fine, not something weak and dying,
because too much of too much never keeps anything alive. This year,
I want to love you while I love myself, not before or after, not as a
cause or effect, and I want us to know happiness that isn’t immediately
shared, that is just yours or is just mine, at least in the moment it finds
its firefly glowing way to either of us. This year, I want to love you
well, so that I will never give up on it, never grow tired or distrustful
or cloudy or dull, and so that I can still love you next year, and the year
after that, and the year after that, and the year after that.