It’s not you. It’s me.

I love you, I do, but I’m afraid this isn’t working out.

It’s not you. It’s me.

I’ve never encountered someone who gives even a fraction as much as you.

With dusk’s dew in the air, I hear your voice, and by the time I wake up you’ve written a song for me whilst I slept. It always bares an aspect of your heart I never knew.

Then before noon you’ve taken me for a tour around the world, showering me with gifts and pageantry along the way.

By midday your affection wraps like a universal blanket, lulling me into a numinous sleep, to dream in ineffable textures, colors, and temperatures.

I can’t recount the moments when l rise from my slumber, just as evening closes in, and you tell me about the new wardrobe you’ve acquired, “there in the closet,” for me to try on.

But before I’m even fully dressed, I’m drunk in the back of a bar with you, unable to walk or stand or breathe.
You take me home, as you always faithfully do, and let me rest.

Yet all night I can hear you writing, plotting, singing new songs—sounds I’ve never heard—knowing, but not knowing, exactly what the next day has in store.

Together, naked, I see the eternal unity of all perceived bodies,
from which I glimpse pristine, eternal emptiness in our eyes—

And then with this mind, the eternal objective observer, Here.

As I find comfort in the one from the other,

I am once again overcome by beauty,

awe,

terror,

and panic.

So, I flee.

This horror invokes a coward’s longing for nonperception.
To unravel from the fabric of existence.
To rip myself apart.
See me come undone,
At the seams,
I stay stitched to you.
My only consolation is knowing
when I crawl back on my knees, in due time, as I always do,
you’ll be at the door, waiting,
as you do day and night,
with open arms and glistening eyes, saying,
“Come in. Where have you been?”