Your body doesn’t have to be made of steel, arms and legs don’t need to bear the weight of armor or have the strength to lift trains from their tracks. You don’t need to know how to fly or wear a cape over your shoulders. You don’t need to rescue me or spend your days trying to mend, trying to fix.
You don’t have to be flawless, wear a mask to hide your blemishes, hide who you are and tell everyone you’re strong, even when you’re feeling weak. You don’t have to save the world, you know. You don’t have to be perfect.
You don’t have to be a superhero – I just want you, as you are.
I just want us. I just want this. I want the mistakes, the voices raised a little too loud, the anger that sparks like fire between us. I want the days when you don’t feel like yourself, the mornings when I’m tired and crabby, the nights when we want to lay on opposite sides of the bed.
I want the arguments, all of them. I want the stubbornness and fights behind closed doors. I want the moments right after we wake and we’re groggy and dressed in wrinkled t-shirts and don’t want to talk to each other, just want to close our eyes again.
I want this.
I want our lazy Saturday mornings. I want our laughter, spreading like liquid throughout the room. I want the moments where we can’t get enough, when we can’t stop holding each other, can’t stop kissing, and we let the world fade around us – just you and me.
I don’t want you to be this untouchable person, this superhero with the power and strength of a god. I don’t want you to think that to love me, you have to be the best, the ultimate, the ideal.
I don’t want a perfect love story; I don’t believe in them. I want a tattered book, our love writing pages of our ups and downs, twists and turns, mistakes and emotions and craziness.
So please take off that cape, remove that mask, come sit down next to me, shoulder to shoulder, beating heart in rhythm with mine. I just want you as you are, and all the ways you’ll change, shift, let me down, bring me up, and show me how to love.
We are human. And that’s all I need – someone just as sinful as me to hold my hand and walk with me.
I want someone to push me, someone to challenge me. I want a relationship that continually grows, and strives to be better.
I don’t need excellence. I need something genuine.
I need you, us. I need this, right here in this moment. Right here in all this deficiency, in all this confusion, in all the ways you and I are flawed, but true.
I don’t want the capes, the flight, the incredible strength, the saving.
I just want a partner by my side, a lover, an imperfect equal.
I just want this.