…and.

the picture of you in my mind is of the softness in your eyes and
a reflection of the love i have staring back at me.
there are moments i’m so sure you feel it
not that i feel i have to wait
for what you’re feeling
to address what
i am

…but.

i am holding back. naturally out of concern for you, but a lie is a lie is a lie
is omission and my level of contrition in the face of our redefinition
of integrity – well it’s killing me. my love for you is bursting.
i swim in it whenever my head is filled with your words
secretly coming undone during innocent exchange
moist and clandestine the blush flushes
imagining your touch. you see?
it makes me wander from
the point of all this.
which is
you…

…well.

i’m digressing because i’m procrastinating and, well, i’m procrastinating
because i’m scared. and i’m scared because i don’t know if this
from me would be a new complication or a blessing to you
then i realized yesterday just how much i loved you
once. enough to drive me to tears and i haven’t
cried like that in years not even over death.
not too profound to say but i’m – doing it
doing it again see? what you make me
can’t take the anxiety. not anymore
so i’m going to go ahead and
open up to you no more…
bs.

…so.

back then, when we were … so … entwined. press rewind and pause
and you’ll see that i didn’t just adore you. it went so much deeper
and if you click forward one frame you’ll see me loving you
and not loving you, to be clear, like one loves a dear one
or even how you love a dear one you fell into a
lust-ship with for a few months, more like
i was in love with you. so deeply
i wore it casually but it was
a formal affair to me
i loved
you.

…yes.

i was in full on, yes i will marry you like you asked me the first time, love.
and was is the wrong word. especially in the space where i write
because i am still in love with you and to tell the whole truth
i’m fairly sure i never stopped loving you
just gave up that we could be. i know
you can’t love me back. probably not
now at least, but if you could i’d
do
say
be

anything.

go anywhere
as soon as
we’re
free.

precisely because i know you’d never
let me change. not for you.
then, you loved as is.
and that is why.

i’m no longer ashamed of it, and.
it’s the same, my part of us
it’s the same this love,
we’re the same

it’s
still
the same.

and i?
am out of the keep it secret game…

this.
has to stop.

I keep thinking it’s under control and that sane moments are prevailing and that eventually, maybe this one time, today, I will wake up and not love you. Because yesterday I was at least over the love letter enough to speak to you without telling you that I want to start a forever with you today. I thought I spoke very sensibly, and that while there was some aftermath of slicked thighs and caramel thoughts of skin pressed together, the logical conclusion for me was that this was lust.

not Love

which.
has to stop.

One love song.

One stupid, sappy, sentimental sensitive, sensory recollection embedded in a love song dissolved me back in time, salty tears mixing with the ocean of the love I hold inside for you.

One song and I’m ruined, progress discarded. I thought all the venting of my soul was supposed to help me reclaim my control, my dominance over my heart and my thoughts and my resolve not to pursue this until the time is right or maybe not at all.

Wait, when did I start saying “until the time is right” or “maybe” not at all? I can’t have these thoughts because they are blurring into fantasies I can’t handle and

that.
has to stop.

Then there’s the pining. Seriously, am I 12? I’m supposed to be in lust, so where is all this internal whining coming from? Why can’t I just get. a grip. And go back to the empty quiet life I had, slowly building an ice wall around myself in a comfy cool separation? How did you get back into my head?

And since when do I think about you when I’m not in bed? And why can’t I fight against my emotions, or at least just pretend that in the end I’ll

be able to
…stop …

through my eyes

realizing.

and I remembered the first time you said you loved me
the way it made me feel
you can’t imagine
it was in this way
a way that you can’t imagine

for the explosive mixture
of heartache and desire
I was fingering pages that emanated our last forever
teasing the scent of then back into my soul

a physical pain remembering
how much I love you

I mean loved
Remembering
how much I loved
loved
love
you.

Which of course made me think of the first time you said you loved me
the way it made me feel
you can’t imagine
it was in this way
a way that you can’t imagine

I’m so petrified that you’re watching me more closely than you say you are
That you’ll come upon this token of my blood’s love-drunk pledge to you
And call me with counseling words of how we can never be
Asking me why I can’t see that we’d never go far
But I can’t help it

because I love you
in this way
that
you
can’t imagine.

the way I love you
you can’t imagine it
you couldn’t comprehend
wish dream or
imagine it

“I love you in a way you can’t imagine.”

I’ve been done with him long enough to know that I want the taste of you in my mouth like fresh honey. I can see your eyes every time I close mine. Falling under your spell

too
too
too

soon after this disengagement. Because I just don’t want you to be a rebound lover. I want to reach for you, apple of my high, sink my teeth into the delicious note of your apparition, still living in me. And I know I can’t have you, is the problem. I know it in every one of the molecules that collides within my body as they each scream your name.

I’ve not the faintest clue how to get you out of my system. Explain to me what makes someone sit around and read old correspondence over and over, smelling pages, draping paper across my arm as if I can squeeze your touch out of ink.

I can’t be like this. I absolutely cannot be like this. I cannot be brought to tears remembering the heat of your voice in my ear. Reason, sanity, unclouded straight-thinking – these are the things I ought to be clinging to, ought to be playing songs about and singing out loud. Songs like Slowly, Surely, I walk away from

but. Little “b” but. I can’t walk away from you, run, think, speak.

My first mistake was becoming friends. The first time you re-inhaled my voice I could hear the caution in yours. Like I’d be like danger to touch. Like our smoke meant fire. Like you knew better than to sip my poison.

And it would, is, does. That was the moment I swallowed any doubt that leaving him was right. And I didn’t know you were leaving her.

Yet from the first electric feather of your apprehension, I was back there again, back on my back drinking every word you ever said, letting you destroy me, recreated with your softly uttered syllables, whispering me into frenetic spasms that bordered on pain with their intensity.

How is it that I’m writing you again, writing poetry? – I can only write poetically, write poetry when I’m in love, with an idea, with a song with a

shit.

It is expressly forbidden to love you. I can’t even handle the idea that our skin might brush past each other in coming months. Or that our vocal vulnerability would waft in neighboring air. We can’t meet, ever again. Right now I’m losing control of myself, right now, thousands and thousands of miles split from you my heart wails a pattern in your chest, begging for release.

We must not be lovers. Both our worlds would cease in that shower of delight. And as the ebbing embers of each echoed eternity eventually eclipsed every elevation, all of the stars finger-painting in the sky would point at us

ending the world
ending the world
ending the world.