*

...with someone you shouldn’t have fallen in love with?


i.

I can feel you stirring again inside of me, like an itch I’ve just scratched which bubbles away under my skin, not quite becoming fully fledged, but crying for attention; a child’s painting left out in the rain to ruin. Is it love? …or is it simply an obsession, burning away at my heart: eating and corroding my rationality until I feel I cannot bear it any longer, until I feel it consuming me, its long amber tongue flickering and smouldering as it wraps itself around my heart, constricting, squeezing, making me gasp for the air we breathe together.

ii.     

I long to touch you, hold you close to me and feel your heart beat quicken, entwining with the rhythm of my own. Insecurity laces my tongue, holding me back as I see you now through the eyes of a lover, uncontested perfection. You walk past me, looking at me as a knight would a beggar, seeing only rags and melancholic aspirations, the warm glow worm of love fallen like a star from your eyes. A smile is on my face as you return it, in reality it is nothing more than a gash in a rotten orange, grinning like a slashed Halloween pumpkin. False hope holds my hand, drifting me along the valley of hope; you love me as I love you.

iii.

You are my thrill, something I cannot have, but want, need, wish for. Like ripples along a calm, unbroken surface you pulsate, growing in strength to become a roaring tirade in my thoughts. Shimmering blue pathways erupt with crimson and ruby, flowing in my consciousness as radiant as the blood singing your name as it races to keep me alive. Alas, you are not the only one who resides here as a shower of calm, steady green drenches your vibrancy, melting the liveliness, packaging you away once more into the depths of my double dark mind.


iv.

To risk is to dare, and to dare is to adventure. Am I ready for adventure? I yearn for it, sense it prickling through my veins at night time, longing to be out of these arms and into another’s. I push you away into the cold shadowy air, burying you in the snowflakes rapping at my window, calling me, calling me. To love is to set free, but instead I push you further away, fracturing the rose-thorn bindings between us, urging myself deeper into the tender arms of my true beloved as I feel your fingers whisper through my hair, deathly cold. Visibly I ignore your soft call, willing every fibre I can control not to turn, or even move to acknowledge your presence. Can’t you hear my mind screaming as you leave, weeping and wailing until you return? I’ll wait - but only for so long… avoidance and ignorance is hard to bear…

*

v.

Your words embody a thousand buffets of stone, a searing, white-hot iron, a sinisterly gleaming knife edge. They devour everything within me, nibbling at my gut until I retch. The hardest thing for me to do is to watch you love another, to want her for all eternity, while I lay here, cold and broken, knowing I have to let you go. I should be grateful that I have another, too, but the mute sadness is engulfing me, my eyes weeping, washing away the last of the fragile promises you left unfulfilled. You never really wanted me - I think - but I can never know for sure. Nothing was made clear to me, everything hidden away in an enigma, taunting me, haunting me. Perhaps I saw things that were not there, things seen out of the corner of my eye, like an elusive teardrop curling, dripping and gone.

*

vi.

Later, I let go of the crab’s claw, the vice-grip of turmoil falling away, allowing myself to be purged of you. Like a tumour removed, I believe that you are gone, when in truth you have retreated further into me, concealing yourself from my consciousness with a thin veil. I can sense you are there, feel your ghost bathing in my body, renewing and rebuilding in strength. How can I let you go? I have known you for too long, my first love, the pure white rose damasked lust-red, bloodied by blindness. You have become woven into my soul, my life, my heart. To amputate you is to eliminate me.

vii.      

No… Today I must be swift with my might, pulling you up like a nettle in my mind, before you can thrive once again and sting me. Severing is never easy. Pain is unbearable, blackening my vision, clouding my thoughts. I sap the essence of others, traversing their buoyancy to keep my head above the ever swelling tide. You are still floating in my private aquarium, your nose pointing above the surface, keeping you alive. The water calms me, rationalising my desire-red thoughts, colouring them pastel; every time I dip below the salty surface to glimpse, you are no more than a friend, ever receding, ever transitory. Today I have the strength to submerge you entirely, submitting you for the final time to the watery depths.

Goodbye, my love.

*