I cannot

I cannot say that I love you.

It is not love, to be infatuated with your skin, the dark and moody circles under your eyes.  To see you walk in slow motion, and savour the slender shadows that follow your exits.

To be screaming at a cellular level to touch you, to have my skin pulling feverishly towards yours-that is not what I understand love to be.

To catch your glance, when it meets me at my chest, and not be offended, be excited. What is that? It’s not the stuff that Shakespeare wrote sonnets about.

To shatter my existence, destroy myself for the privilege of your uncommitted presence. To twist my insides and live off every half remembered correspondence. To agonize over attentions, to fantasize, to cry and scream on the inside for you to want me.

To do all this, and to barely know you. To be an extra in your life. I cannot say that I love you-


I cannot admit defeat.