Don’t ask me to shrink
To keep myself in a tidy little box when you’re done pulling me out
My box is big and messy and thick with the ambrosia of love and the stench of rotten promises and confusion

Don’t ask me to shrink
To hide myself
When our moments of physical nakedness and awkward sexuality
Make you suddenly blush and avert your friendship

As if our emotional and spiritual shine for each other were something new
As if our heat didn’t grow in the soil of deep-rooted warmth and security 
As if our bond were the brackish water to be discarded with a bouquet of dissipating whim for physical intimacy

There is no fig leaf big enough to cover
The fullness of who I am
Or even the pieces I’ve shown to you
(And others that I kept barely hidden)
Or of what we were beginning to share together
That shook your vision of who you were
And so you looked away.

Our relationship has thrived on kindness through awkwardness and silences and bald truths and raw emotion
Our bond has strengthened through vomit and piss and other inconvenient realities
Ironic that a few kisses could crumble what vomit and piss and inconvenience couldn’t

Don’t ask me
To become less bursting with love and invitation and desire to be with you
To not feel a little sad and panicky to know you want to be far from where I am
But somehow you have
And I have
And it’s all perfectly okay
And perfectly polite
And awfully constricted
And perfectly inadequate