look what you’ve done.

“What more do you want?”

I really don’t like it when you ask me that.

Out loud, you’ve asked me twice. Impliedly, you’ve asked me countless times.

I squirm in my seat. I hug the pillow tighter. I walk out the door. I can’t breathe. I can’t look you in the eye.

I don’t like it.

No, not because I don’t have a reply, but because I precisely know the answer.

Every single time you ask, you shove the truth right to my face.

Every single time you ask, the answer lumbers through my mind. I violently push it aside for some silly quip like “possession” or “exclusivity.”

The nervous laughter kills me.

I don’t know if you’ll ever understand that what we have now means so much more to me than it will ever mean to you.

But you ask me that anyway, like I take everything happening for granted, like I don’t recognize it for what it is.

“What do you want that we do not have?”

Feeling this strong about someone eats you. It keeps you awake at night. It makes you feel almost too powerful.

Feeling this strong about someone is one thing.

But it’s an entirely different – overwhelmingly beautiful, spiritual, numinous, cosmic even – thing to be able to share  that strength, that power, with someone, by having that person feel the same way.

THAT I don’t have.

And the idea that I can’t ever have that with you is that which I struggle against every time I’m with you – hell, every time I think of you.
____

“he could even be the guy you’d make sure gets the things you think would make him happy, knowing and not minding that you’re not one of them.”

like tea and cigarettes, we fit–
some vice i cannot and will not quit.

lips move for the waves
tail of hope thwarts off
flesh screams of aching.

____

i have no fear.