It takes a lot of energy to not think of you, to force myself not to feel the flicker of my heart as it beats for you. The painful wrenching as I tear your heavy presence out of my very soul. The taste of your lips still haunts me, the touch of your skin, the very essence that makes you whole. I can’t feel this way anymore. I’ve been running, pretending that I don’t still love you. I can’t admit those three words ever again. They were my greatest downfall. And yet they gave me the greatest gift you could have ever offered me. better than a ring. Worth more than any priceless diamond.

It’s a lie I tell the world, that I don’t love you. That I don’t long to have you hold me in your arms. Sometimes, I feel as though I am walking around naked, and everywhere that you had once touched, kissed, and caressed is stained a bright red, your personal scarlet letter branded on my body. I quiver at the mention of your name. My face flushes and blushes, from the top of my head to the tip of my toes I tingle with delight. Why can’t I see you? Here? Tonight?

I want you. I need you. I love you.

Muttered words I barely mention in one single breath, words I want to shout to the rooftops but I can’t. You won’t let me. Society won’t let me. It hurts. It burns. It kills me that I can’t have you. I lie to you. To me. I tell myself we can never be. That we “will” never be.

Why?
Because I am afraid.

Afraid that if we “were” to ever really be together, then we’d be so happy that many would try and bring us down. That know and understand a love like ours. I doubt myself with these thoughts, feeling that these emotions are just figments of my wild imagination. That you never truly loved me. That you never will. I prepare my heart day in and day out. By now, it is a soldier and has well earned its “stripes”.

I want to stop the ringing in my ears. I want to scream just so I won’t hear those thoughts, those jumbled words. Anything to help me from thinking about your face.