I Love Vous: On Polyamory

I thought I could reign it in and unify all of it, write to you, and be able to say, “Yes, it’s you.”

It’s always you, isn’t it? And yet…it never is. But the French had it right all along…I love…vous. (English equivalent: “yous”)

To you, my darling,
I miss you. It started as a simple “I enjoy your company, and you mine, why not get together and have a great time…” But it’s become a bit more that. Just a bit. Not to say I feel incomplete or inadequate without you. Not even the memories or history. I miss the possibilities. I miss when our innocence wasn’t jaded by fragments of whatever future we thought we had to stress over, when we made plans that felt more like dreams than setting concrete.
I miss when you wanted me…enough to actually show it. I miss when “making an effort” for me was never “effort”, when I was a desire not an obligation. I miss…the possibility of us.

To you, my love,
I love you. But I’ll never tell you that, at least, not sober. I love you, not in the cliche “I want to spend the rest of my life with you” kind of way — I’m not romantically idealistic.
But I love you. The you I had gotten to know, however briefly, however endless that  fickle moment seemed…but the you I love…is…unbeknown to anyone but myself. The you I love, only I have seen. No one knows you…except you and I. That “you”, that’s who I love. It is also why I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life with you…much as I adore you, the combination of us would simply explode. We’re just… too much together.
I’ll love you anyway, but I’m not going to do anything about it.

To you, my sweetheart,
You’re very likeable. I hope you know that. Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. You’re that flux between enjoying the attention but hating the repercussions. You want me to commit, but you don’t want to reciprocate. You want to commit, but you’re scared I’ll walk away. So you cling to them instead, the others who don’t seem to like each other very much…well…they probably wouldn’t, if they’d known about each other. But they don’t. And I do. Out of all of us, I’m the only one actually loving you being you. Selflessly entertained by the life you lead, knowing that simply being the desirable part of it is all I’d ever wanted. Keep being you, sweetheart, you’re amazing.

To you, my dearest,
I don’t know how you made it in. No, I don’t know why I let you in. All I know is that I made room for you, and then you disappeared. Then reappeared, wriggled your way in, got comfortable, and disappeared again. You’ve taught me not to see it as a game, to embrace it as your reality, the way you do things. It’s your “expression”. You create an illusion — for us, for them.
Never knowing where you stand, jumping on and off the pedestal they placed you on — “just because you can“, might I add — but, my dear, you do it, for all of us who wish we could.  Your absence leaves behind a presence, my dearest, and it’s one that manages to mesmerize, even from a distance. That’s you, dear, and I get it…it’s you who has yet to understand you…

To you, my beloved,
We need to talk.

I love vous.

MG

(Creative writing: Polyamory)