The irony.

May distance remain distant,
May hope stay hopeful.
May expectations of the me you think I am never shatter in your eyes
I am a liar anyway.

May we make love
To the ideas of each other’s body –
Scents of our imagination lighting our need.
May the calamity never strike
Of you having to see my deformities
And me having to squirm at your scars
Some truths are unnecessary.

May we match the meanings of words
And their tone that we write them in.
And never have to share.
May the cacophony of your baritone with the uncouth laughter in my voice
Never reach an ear that ever hopes to love.
It will only wither.

May we fall asleep in imaginary warmth
You in my curls, me in your arms
Pillows are nothing but solidified dreams
And we know better than anyone else
What it is like to want to drift to slumber without a finger to caress your forehead.

Let ignorance prevail. Let us never know light.
And other trivial things that lie beyond the mirage.
We are but liars.
In a world that gloats in its disdainful reality.

Come, burn.

Come. Settle. Be restless.

Squirm in your seat.

Wish for an open sky. Wish for an escape. Wish to be as far away from me because I scorch the corners of your skin.

Breathe uneasy because I am around.

Tell me you don’t want me. Watch the scorn in my eyes. The disdain that seeps into my expression.

You know you cannot leave. I know you don’t want to. We’ll play these games till I decide not to.

It wasn’t meant to be that way. You had the upper hand. Once. A long time ago.

But I settle too. My hands hidden. Holding a fruit, a dagger, a key, a book.

You wonder. Trying to not look like you do.

You want the room to close in on you.

I make a move. Towards you.

Magnetic. Gravitational. Colossal.

You freeze. I meant to melt you.

A torch under your face. Examining nothing. Watching everything.

No desire, no doubt.

No need to know.

Just a thirst to burn you.

Why you?, we wonder.

Nothing.

It’s nothing, I tell myself.

It’s nothing when I look into crowds and I think I see your shoulder. Nothing at all, when a voice drains my blood to my feet in cacophony, and I want to know who it belongs to. No one really, when I taste a different salt and am reminded of your neck, your wrist.

But then I stay up in the darkness and count the nothings that have passed me today, yesterday, every day before that. Nothings that can’t be seen but add up to a weight that slows my pace and makes breathing a task I’d rather give up. I see the nothings that surround me- goosebumps, deja vu, a tune, a shape, a joke. But that’s what I feel like when I close my eyes and feel across the cold sheet and don’t feel you. A joke.

It’s not that the sheet is cold. It doesn’t have the warmth of your skin, the pressure of our love, the release of your touch. I feel nothing, and nothing feels cold.

Blur.

Sitting at a table. Rocking back and forth.
“I don’t love him. I never did. I cannot. He can’t love me. I am not his type. Why? Why do I still love him?”
Failures of your heart and the lack of any, any willpower towards a stranger. Against him even.
Fuck. Fuck.
Will this be done with? Will I ever be the way I was before him?
What was I like before him?
The smudged errors of time from now and before. All I see is his face. A dull thudding on the walls as my heart throws itself on to my ribcage to stop the din.
One day my heart will succeed in stopping this beating. Of itself. My mind.
And the thoughts of madness, an obsession with a him who never was.