Amalgamation

We are what we seem. Two people, joined, our boundaries smeared together until we don’t know if we’re completing or devouring each other. It certainly feels that way sometimes, as if who I was before wasn’t real, or wasn’t important. That I’ve never had a nose or lips of my own, that my face exists only to cradle yours. But while part of me lives only to taste your shadow, other parts of me—my hair, my breast, my back—are sunlit, far away from you, because you’re so small, really, and you can only control what you can touch. You know it, too, which might be why you want to attach yourself to me, eat away at me, as if by doing so you can gain everything you can never be. There’s a power in unbecoming, in self-effacing, in letting your color seep into mine and tinge me all over with you. Because it lets me know that I’m enough, so much enough that I can be you and me at once and never lose anything I will miss.