I want to be close.

I want to connect.

I want to stay in relationship.

Conceptually. Emotionally. Physically.

That’s the paradox.

The people I love most

orient in the space I’m least fluent.

They live in emotion.

They speak in feeling.

They hold space with grace

in a terrain I barely know how to enter.

Meanwhile I orient in accuracy.

I go to words. To logic. To precise articulation of what’s happening.

Not to control. Not to win. To make sense of the thing.

How’s that working?

It usually makes things worse.

We’re looking at the same picture

through different lenses.

We agree on the facts.

We’re in the same moment.

We don’t land in the same place.

That’s where the loop begins.

I try harder with what I know.

They try harder with what they feel.

I offer analysis.

They offer experience.

Each of us is trying to love.

Each of us is trying to be understood.

All that effort and we miss.

The loop isn’t from being disconnected.

It’s from being different

in how we connect.

Their superpower is my kryptonite.

My superpower feels like intrusion.

I want to grow.

I want to stretch.

I want to learn their language.

Awareness doesn’t equal ability.

I can see the gap.

I can name it.

I still can’t close it.

That’s the dissonance.

That’s the paradox.

To know I’m in the loop

still not knowing how to get out.