Love's Paradox

To be with you

is not to lose myself,

but to meet myself

in unfamiliar mirrors—

shimmering with your gaze.

I do not vanish

in the warmth of your wanting,

nor dissolve beneath your tide.

I stretch—

roots deeper, branches wider—

because you are near.

What is autonomy

if not the choice

to soften without breaking?

To bend with the wind

and call it dancing?

You do not claim me,

yet I grow in your presence.

Not changed for you,

but changed through you—

as light through stained glass

reveals colors

I hadn’t known were mine.

Persuasion, when true,

doesn’t press

but invites.

It listens more than it speaks,

and loves without erasure.

And so I remain—

not untouched,

but undiminished.

Not surrendered,

but shared.

And more myself

than I ever was alone.