I love you so much that it hurts.

You know what I mean…when who you are fulfills me so completely that it’s almost too much to experience all at once. You are too much for me. Where can I store the excess of what you have brought to my life?

I’m going to boil my love for you in a cauldron to distill all that lies beautiful between us. I’m going to bottle what is left and sip it slowly, like one who wanders the thirsty desert, because if I drank it all at once I would drown in your essence.

I don’t want to drown in you, but I would like to swim in the depths of your imagination, even though it will cause me a cutting pain.

Love is like eating with only sharpened knives for tools.

You have torn a whole so deep in my heart, there is but a paper thin membrane left to keep it together…one more thrust of your fist and you’ll have murdered me, left me bleeding, left me thrashing on the floor gasping for that last, precious breath of air. Like an addict, I survive on the intensity of your stare, the growl of your voice, the tenderness of your touch.

You burrowed to places that were forbidden. We agreed that you would not take every fucking thing that belonged to me, not the workings of my mind, not my soul. We were to share, little by little, but now you own me. You have the key to my existence. You are the keeper of my sins. You know me all too well. There is nothing left to hide. I did not want to be this exposed.

You promised that you wouldn’t eat every scrap of meat off my bones. But I gave it to you, didn’t I? I allowed you to explore me and map out where my vulnerable places lay.

I love the pain of your attention.

And now that you have stripped me of all that I had to give you, you stand before me holding the hand of a creature made of butterfly wings and moon beams. She is young but hardly innocent. Her hair is adorned with beads and her feet with henna and rings. She stares me down with curious eyes and offers to take my hand. You watch with that confidence you have in our love, that assurance that what we have can never be broken.

I watch you kiss her and am shattered by how beautiful you are.

You are so open, so pure, so trusting of the words we have spoken…that I will not break, that I need to see this, that what makes you mine cannot be stolen.

You can make love to her as long as we have this knotted, twisted rope of desire to know each other fully. Beyond what we could imagine, to discover what’s at the bottom of the ocean of our being. To see each other through the lens of our creator, to know what is limitless, what is darker than the sky at midnight.

Your arms do not betray me when you hold her. Your legs do not betray me when they press her open. Your tongue does not betray me when it explores her tenderness.

Your heart does not betray me when you whisper that she’s what you want. Your soul does not betray me when you pull me in to join you and ask for what I’m good at.

My mouth does not betray you when I make her cum.

Your lazy smile as you share her, share me, keeps me focused on what makes us unbreakable— what makes this kind of love unshakeable.

What is truthful cannot be broken.

What is spoken openly cannot be lied about.

What is done in the light cannot be dark.

When you take what is freely given, it is not stolen.

What shows us broken open cannot be broken further still.

What makes you mine makes you impossible to hold captive.

What makes you my captive also sets you free.

What bonds our love together is the willingness to say goodbye.

But I will not say goodbye. For where would I go, after this? After having known every exquisite, twisted, enlightened, sensual part of you? Every shadowed cavern of your mind? Every last particle of your free-falling soul?

There is nowhere for me but you.

Relephant: 

More Sex with More People: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly of Open Relationships. 

6 Common Misconceptions About Polyamory. 

Let’s face it: we’re all in Open Relationships.

Author: Monika Carless 

Editor: Renee Picard 

Image: Magdalena Roeseler at Flickr