✨ a beautiful anchor✨
Sonnet XVII is exactly about loving in the unseen places,
“not from the outside, but from within,” loving “as certain dark things are to be loved.”
Goodbye to me.
On the 17th,
I became someone else.
I loved someone
the way Neruda wrote about.
In the shadow,
without names,
without witnesses,
where love is quiet
and consuming…
And believes it can live in the dark.
They arrived like an eclipse
and my life reorganized itself
around that darkness.
I mistook surrender for depth
and gifts for devotion.
When the light finally returned,
I saw what loving in the shadow
had cost me…
the parts of myself
that disappeared
while I was loving from within.
And now, years later,
on another 17th,
the sky darkens again.
This time, I understand.
I am not saying goodbye to you.
I am saying goodbye
to the person I was
before … and during ….
that eclipse of the heart.
Goodbye to the version of me
who loved without protection,
who believed that love,
if it was real enough,
would not wound.
That person is gone.
What remains
is someone changed,
clearer,
and unwilling
to return to the dark.
I loved you deeply.
And because I loved that way…
quietly,
completely…
I will never be the same.
But…
This goodbye is for her.
For the self
who loved in the shadows,
and for the light
I choose to keep.