She has heard it in different words her entire life.
Sometimes spoken. Sometimes implied. Sometimes delivered
through the slow disappearance of people who once seemed certain
they wanted to know her.

She is too much.

Too much emotion. Too much intensity. Too much presence.
Too much body occupying too much space.
She laughs too loudly, cares too deeply, notices too quickly,
remembers too much and feels everything long after everyone else has moved on.

People seem to like her best in pieces.
The funny part. The useful part. The reckless part.
The part that answers the phone, makes things easier,
or becomes whatever the moment requires.

She can be a good time.
She can be the name remembered after too many drinks,
the curiosity someone finally decides to explore,
the person reached for when ordinary no longer satisfies.

She can be wanted.

God, she knows she can be wanted.

But wanted and chosen have never meant the same thing,
and she learned that distinction slowly, painfully,
through enough almosts to recognize
the difference before anyone has to explain it.

Chosen belongs to daylight.

Chosen gets ordinary mornings and inconvenient afternoons.
Chosen gets a place that does not disappear when circumstances change.
Chosen does not have to wonder whether silence means busy, overwhelmed,
bored, finished, or simply forgotten.

She has never understood what makes someone become that person.

The one people stay for.
The one they make room for instead of fitting into whatever space remains.
The one whose absence is noticed before she has to announce
that she has stopped showing up.

In love, she has been convenient.
In friendship, she has been convenient.
Reliable enough to call, independent enough not to require much,
strong enough that leaving her rarely seems cruel.

She makes it easy for them.

Perhaps that is her greatest mistake.

She understands circumstances before anyone explains them.
She forgives distance before anyone apologizes for creating it.
She finds reasons for silence, excuses absence, lowers expectations,
and makes herself comfortable with whatever portion is offered.

She never wants anyone to feel trapped by her.

So she leaves every exit unlocked.

Then watches people use them.

Maybe that is why she loves the darkness.

There are no promises hidden in it.
No expectation that morning will suddenly make everything different.
No requirement to become smaller, quieter, easier,
or less complicated before she is allowed to belong.

The darkness has never asked her to explain her size.

It has never flinched at the enormity of her emotions.
Never called her intensity exhausting. Never asked her to soften
the sharp edges or tuck away the inconvenient pieces
so someone else could hold her comfortably.

It simply takes all of her.

The beautiful. The difficult. The excessive.
The body she has spent years apologizing for.
The heart she has repeatedly tried to teach
to need less than it does.

All of her.

Maybe that is why she stopped fearing the night
long before she stopped fearing abandonment.

Because darkness does something people rarely have.

It stays.

It surrounds her without asking her to earn the space she occupies.
It asks nothing of her except that she exist inside it,
exactly as enormous and complicated
as she has always been.

And when morning comes, she already knows what happens.

The darkness will retreat.
The world will begin choosing again.

And she will stand quietly at the edge of the daylight,
wondering what it might feel like, just once,
to be too much
and still be chosen.

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