WHAT IS LOVE?

THE ROMNOTE PROJECT

Words. Stories. Legacy.

WHAT IS LOVE?

If Love Is Lost

RNP COMPANION REFLECTION

Companion to the RNP poem

Romeo Imbien Mesina

September 2, 2026

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This poem was not planned.

I did not sit down intending to write poetry. There was no draft in my head, no structure waiting to be filled, no carefully chosen rhyme or verse. The words came through my mouth during a conversation, through dictation, almost as quickly as the thoughts were forming.

The poem came from what happened between Pinky and me on September 2, 2026.

That afternoon had already become another conversation about trust, shorts, boundaries, faithfulness, exclusivity, and the agreements we make with one another. It was also connected to something much larger that I had been considering: whether an open relationship could somehow preserve a relationship that I did not want to lose.

The open relationship was never about wanting another woman.

It was never about wanting freedom for myself.

It came from almost the opposite place.

It came from love.

I had reached a point where I was asking myself what love requires when the person you love wants autonomy that may conflict with the kind of exclusivity you need in order to feel secure. What happens when protecting the relationship seems to require loosening the very boundaries that once defined the relationship?

Do I hold tightly to exclusivity and risk losing the person?

Or do I loosen my grip on exclusivity so that I might keep the person I love?

Either choice contains loss.

That was the contradiction.

The Architecture Behind the Question

Earlier that day, I had already developed the idea that perhaps knowing an uncomfortable truth might be easier than endlessly wondering what is happening. Perhaps an agreement that allows something openly could hurt less than an agreement that prohibits it while leaving two people suspicious, checking, worrying, and wondering whether the agreement is being broken.

That was the architecture behind the open-relationship idea:

Problem.
Uncertainty.
Trust.
Her perspective.
Open relationship.
Structure.

It was not designed to make betrayal acceptable.

It was an attempt to remove the conditions that turn an act into betrayal in the first place.

If both people knowingly agree to a different structure, then honesty remains possible even where exclusivity no longer exists.

But that solution creates another question.

What happens to the person who never truly wanted that structure?

What happens when someone accepts something painful not because it is what he desires, but because losing the person he loves seems even more painful?

That is where the poem begins.

I suffer humanity's pain and grief
because of love.

The pain is not simply jealousy.

It is the conflict between love and possession, autonomy and commitment, sacrifice and self-preservation.

How much can love surrender before the person doing the loving begins surrendering himself?

And if I surrender the boundaries that once told me what our relationship was, am I preserving love—or am I preserving only the presence of the person I love?

That is why the poem keeps asking:

What is love?

When Every Answer Contradicts Another

Because suddenly every answer contradicts another answer.

If love is sacrifice, then perhaps I should sacrifice exclusivity.

If love is willingness, perhaps I should willingly accept what hurts me.

If love is trust, then why am I searching for a structure designed partly because trust has become so difficult?

If love is freedom, then how can I ask another human being to live inside boundaries she does not freely choose?

But if love is commitment, how can commitment survive when its boundaries can no longer be trusted?

The Agreement That Afternoon

There was another truth in the conversation that cannot simply be erased. Pinky said she had been faithful. She said she had stopped talking to other men, had changed how she dressed outside, and had already been trying to honor things I had asked of her.

The argument eventually moved toward reciprocity: if I stopped the behavior she said hurt or degraded her, she would continue respecting the boundaries I said mattered to me. The agreement returned us, at least for that moment, toward family, faithfulness, and exclusivity.

That matters because the poem was not written after some final decision that our relationship would become open.

It came from the uncertainty surrounding that decision.

I was standing between two possible forms of love.

Love her enough to let her be free.

Love each other enough to remain faithful.

And I could not reconcile them.

Perhaps that is why the words came without planning.

My mind had already spent hours trying to engineer the problem. I had examined trust, boundaries, reciprocity, openness, exclusivity, autonomy, consequences, and agreements.

Logic could describe every component.

But logic could not answer the question.

What is love?

If Love Is Lost

And that became the poem.

The ending contains the reason the subtitle became If Love Is Lost.

Because if love is lost,
and loss is mine.

The loss does not necessarily mean losing Pinky.

That is what makes the line more complicated.

There are different ways to lose something.

I could lose the person I love.

I could lose the relationship I believed we had.

I could lose exclusivity.

I could lose trust.

I could lose the future I imagined.

Or, in trying desperately not to lose any of those things, I could slowly lose pieces of myself.

And so the final words became:

And love takes all:
my heart,
my mind.

That is not a declaration that love is evil.

It is not a rejection of love.

It is the testimony of someone discovering its cost.

The poem asks whether love can require so much sacrifice that eventually the person loving must ask what remains of him.

And yet the contradiction survives even that question.

Because despite the pain, despite the arguments, despite considering an arrangement I never imagined I would have to consider, the reason I was searching for another way was still the same reason I was hurting.

I loved her.

Perhaps that is the answer the poem refuses to give.

Love cannot always be explained by the choices it produces.

Sometimes love is the reason someone holds on.

Sometimes love is the reason someone lets go.

Sometimes love builds a boundary.

Sometimes love questions whether that boundary should exist.

Sometimes love asks another person to stay.

And sometimes love becomes willing to accept something it never wanted simply because the alternative is losing the person entirely.

That is why the question remains.

What is love, if love is lost?

And perhaps beneath it is another question that the poem never says aloud:

How much of myself can I lose in order to keep the person I love before what remains is no longer love—but only loss?

— Romeo Imbien Mesina

September 2, 2026

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COMPANION NOTE