Sunflower Theory

There is a kind of love
that does not leave
even when everything else does.

It lingers

    not loudly,
but in the quiet ways
that are harder to escape.

The kind of love
that makes you understand
why Jay Gatsby
kept the lights on
long after the party was over,
as if waiting long enough
might make time
turn back out of pity.

It is not a safe love.
It is not a reasonable one.

It is the kind
that would thrill a poet
and worry a therapist,

    the kind that does not loosen,
    only learns how to stay.

If we were sunflowers,
I would face you.
Not because I have to,
but because I do not know
how not to.

You are my sun
even now.

And that is the problem.

Because I have gone places
to forget you,

    into silence,
    into nature,
    into spaces untouched
    by the noise of everything else.

And still
you remain.

Not beside me,
not within reach,
but constant.

Closer than distance should allow.
Farther than love should survive.

Some would say you are gone.

But what does gone mean
when you are still
the first place my mind returns to?

Tell me

    is this heart still mine,
    or did it quietly become yours
    without asking,
    without returning?

Because all I know is this:

I love you

    and even now
    nothing in me
    has learned how to leave.