where he's at (something borrowed)

"He said this is my bedroom window, he said  this is my view. He said lie down here with me and see the things that I do. Like you were trying to tell me something about the way you live, like you would give me something if you had something to give" -ani difranco

We ran into your ex tonight and you were so visibly rattled, stories flew from your lips of the past injustices and insanity and the like. I listened carefully trying to grip onto a sense of where you are coming from, as though the past might help me make sense of the present. In a world cruel to hearts of kindness we've learned different skills to keep ourselves safe. For you attack and retreat comes as naturally as breath in the face of love. In my pretty pink heart all I know is hold on and forgive. I begin to understand the firing line we stand on either side of, and have to wonder if this is a reconcilable difference. If you can't care and I can't not care then there's an impass here. Here where I know as surely as the blue of the sky that I cannot bloom in a lack of love and that mine alone will never hold us afloat. Here where just the thought of love seems to set your heart in fear, and hurtful words like darts whirl from your lips. I wondered aloud if you ever suffer such emotion and you replied simply that you'd thought so in the past, but it would never last. The gift in change is being able to respond differently to times where you've always reacted the same. Here is where I want to give it all to you, and lay my heart on the line, yet every day you seem intent to remind me that this is not love, and that you are not in love. I hear you loud and clear baby, and yet the fact remains, that I am in love with you and this is my truth. So here where I've grown into a woman from a needy little girl, here in the space where real love has a place I'll say simply this: I love you in a way which asks nothing in return. I dont ask for your love, your hand or to mother your children. I dont require diamonds or money or cars. I love the man that you are, my friend and my lover. I love you for the friendship we share by the light of day as well as the passions which pass many a darkened hour, and I want only to be by your side. So in response to the question of how we'll go anywhere from here, where you can't care and I can't not care, where my heart longs for you to love me out loud and where I yearn for a joke to be only a joke and for 'everything's fine' never to be a lie, I believe there is hope. When where here is isn't where I want to be, please, let me believe, that there's somewhere to go from here. Today I give my love without relinquishing my heart, and lie no burden upon yours, simply asking you to accept the selfless fondness I have for you, and the hope I hold that you'll someday see all that you have to give, and perhaps even choose to give it to me.