I smile at Captain the pit bull and he smiles back. I recently lay in my beloved’s arms and opened, opened, opened like light. I think I need to be extra kind to him, because I must be hard on him like I’m hard on myself. His white arms like fiber, fortitude, slip-sliders, grace.

When I first awoke, I got up and felt myself wanting to go into a weird feeling of separation, where I inwardly storm and blame. It’s so easy to do when we forget our beloved is us. I remembered in time, though, and returned to bed and Christopher’s side. All is light and grace with me, but I worry I left some of my separation with him. I don’t understand how this works. I try to stay present with it.

I do finally understand that I will become Christopher and he will become me and, strange as it sounds, this is healthy so long as we also stay ourselves.

I’m sick of my own brain. The monarch butterfly cruises for sweets. Captain leaps up to try and catch a bee in his mouth.

I’ve felt myself lose myself in partnership several times. It’s the worst feeling, like my own body is a ghost town. Then I’ve fought to keep solid, and raged against becoming the other. What I never understood is that eventually, in love, we both lose and we gain ourselves. We remain the inviolable castle and become our partner’s moat. And it is this balance, this gain, that makes all nomenclature irrelevant: He is my wind, I his air. He is my meadow lark, I his sparrow. I am my own everything. He is his own man. I am his woman. I owe him nothing. I hold nothing from him. I never understood before. I feel happy by the river as everything flows away and I receive it, and more.

When they say “I have nothing to lose,” it’s truer than true. When they say “I have everything to gain,” that’s true too. I’ve always been everywoman and my own person. I cannot lose myself if I love myself. All my starvation has always been self-deprivation. I ahte* Byron Katie, and now I think her every day. Truth is a river.

  • “ahte” = When I used to hate something, but i ate it instead.

I love myself in the sun. A plane flies overhead. Captain pants and a fly lands on his nose. This time he just plays with it, allowing, churning. I am wide like the sea. And my present is me.