An Archive of My Failure in Loving You
should I apologize for all the ways I have loved you?
I can’t help wondering if there is ever a correct way to love you after all these years. I wonder if the way I had loved you all this time is indubitably wrong and only made you feel somehow uncomfortable.
Probably, I should have never loved you as if you were the centerpiece of my chronic universe. Perhaps, I shouldn’t have loved you the way those desperate, gravitational tides would always long to touch the shore. Maybe, I shouldn’t have loved you the way puppies get excited by playing in the snow for the first time. Or perhaps, I shouldn’t have loved you the way an innocent child admires the ethereal beauty of a rainbow after the rain. Furthermore, I probably shouldn’t have loved you the way Hellebores, Violas, or Cyclamen still miraculously bloom in winter. Maybe, I really shouldn’t have loved you the way Narcissus loved his own reflection in a pool of water (or should I say being obsessed with himself until he died of thirst and starvation). Thinking about it, perhaps I should have never loved you the way ancient sailors needed this certain knowledge about the movement of the stars, moon, and sun to help them navigate their way home. Again, everything would probably work out just fine had I never loved you the way poets enjoy cooking up feelings along with stacks of words in order to bestow an eclectic artwork called poetry.
However, isn’t it too much for you to tell me that the way I loved you up until now has done nothing but kill you slowly? You should have just told me to unlearn everything about us — to unlearn all my unethical ways of loving you. That way, I could easily prevent myself from repeating the same mistake by holding back all my love so it wouldn’t burden anyone else.
Or maybe … you could have just told me that you no longer have the capacity to love me back the way you used to. You could have just told me that your feelings toward me have eventually changed.
But again, the sole reason all that happened was because it was you alone who managed to make me able to love that much. In the end, the way I loved you a little too overwhelmingly turned into something more disastrous because it was a lot more than what you could take — and I should have known better.
