Asking For Too Much
I am a flood
and I keep apologizing
for the wetness.
I am a feast
and I keep asking
if I am too much to eat.
I am the ocean
and I keep trying
to make myself small enough
for your hands to hold.
But oceans do not shrink.
Feasts do not apologize.
Floods do not ask permission
to be what they are.
I wanted you to see the storm in me
and stay anyway.
I wanted you to taste the fullness
and not turn away.
I wanted you to hold the weight
and call it sacred.
But I have drowned before.
I know what it feels like
to be the one who pulls another down
with my own thrashing.
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And I know
that loving someone
does not mean
asking them to drown with you.
To beg you to stay
while I am still storm
is not love.
It is hunger
disguised as devotion.
It is asking you to swallow
what I cannot digest myself.
So I will not ask you
to stand in my rain.
I will not ask you
to hold the flood
I have not learned to hold.
I will let you go
not because I do not love you
but because I love you
enough to stop asking you
to accept the parts of me
that I am still learning
how to accept myself.
I am still too much.
I will always be too much.
But I am done
asking others
to carry what I must learn
to carry alone
