134340

Once, I had a place in your universe.

I had a name there.

I belonged there.

And then one day, you decided I didn't.

But my orbit never changed.

I used to know what I was to you.

I knew where I stood.

I knew what I meant.

I knew what you called me when no one else was listening.

Then suddenly, the name disappeared.

Not me.

Just the name.

You changed what I was to you.

But you didn't change who you were to me.

So, I kept circling.

Without a name to myself, I still orbit you.

They told me I had to be something else now.

Smaller.

Different.

No longer worthy of the place you'd once given me.

As if changing the name could change the history.

As if being re-classified meant I had somehow become less than I was before.

But I was still there.

Still turning.

Still moving through the dark.

Still caught in your gravity.

I think about Pluto sometimes.

Once, it had a place.

A name that meant something.

A place among the others.

Then one day, they decided it no longer belonged there.

They called it something else.

134340.

A number instead of a title.

A designation instead of belonging.

But Pluto didn't disappear.

It didn't stop existing because someone changed what it was called.

It kept moving.

Kept circling the sun.

Kept returning to something that no longer called it home.

It didn't know it had been demoted.

It didn't know it was supposed to stop.

It just kept orbiting.

And maybe that's the cruelest part.

It had spent so long being pulled toward the same place that it didn't know how to go anywhere else.

It didn't know there was supposed to be a moment when it stopped.

There was no sudden break in its path.

No warning.

No moment when the sky went dark and told it, you don't belong here anymore.

It simply kept going.

The way I did.

The same way I still do.

You can change what something is called without changing what it loves.

You called me something different.

But my heart didn't receive the memo.

It still knew your gravity.

It still knew the distance between us.

It still knew how to find you in the dark.

Maybe that's what I've been confusing all this time.

I thought that if I was still here, still circling you, still pulled toward you, then some part of me must still belong to you.

But an orbit isn't a promise.

It isn't belonging.

It is simply movement around something that still has gravity.

Maybe I don't need to stop loving you.

Maybe I just need to stop mistaking love for a reason to stay in orbit.

Because you have already chosen a different place for me in your universe.

And I can't keep waiting for you to change that.

I don't know if I'll ever stop feeling your gravity.

Maybe I don't have to.

I only have to remember that gravity can pull you toward something without requiring you to stay.

You changed what I was to you.

But you didn't get to decide what I would become without you.

Once, I had a place in your universe.

I had a name there.

I belonged there.

I don't anymore.

But I am still here.