Every now and then

It wasn't about your body being perfect. It wasn't about you being perfect. It was about that you had this...let me start again. It was about that when you weren't near that I would play you on repeat in my mind, intensely fixated on you, but when you were near, all I could see were the flaws that turned me off. Knowing those flaws intimately, I didn't care. The effect you had on me was too overpowering and addictive. You were worth more to me in that broken form than not at all.

first loves don't leave...I guess that's true.

Every now and then, I look you up and force myself to not send you a message, not to continue searching for you, not to continue to wonder about you. How I've failed!

Maybe the cycle of heartbreak is part of your attraction, a memory of you colored with devastation is your sex appeal, a tainted slaughter of affection is the cure, so now I engage in this affair of my mind flipping for an imagined love. No crushed kisses met with your re-emergence. For a few days, I can almost sense you, then it fades into the abyss and all normalizes.

The very thought of you

Lingering in the afterglow....
          I'm watching her fingers run delicately down my chest with her head cradled in the nook between my arm and body. "I want out of this."

Without missing a beat, I caught her hand and held it sternly. It wasn't in my repertoire to have this reaction, but I did it. Now what do I do? Staring straight at the ceiling, "What do you mean?"

She slides her hand out of my grip. "I mean that I want to be a person that can like you for the right reasons, instead because you check the boxes on my list. Because I want someone that doesn't make me feel like I'm walking on eggshells, teetering on your approval. Because I'm not myself with you, but I'm a better self with you. Umm...like I'm more....I dunno."

More rabbit-hole talk. She paused and looked up at me. "I don't get it."

"You don't have to get it. You have to decide if you're gonna commit to trying some new things I want, and I'll do the same for you. Balance." The word balance sounded more like a question mark.

"I thought we had this conversation. Didn't we say this already?"

"Yeah. And you still thwart my attempts."

"Yeah? Tell me when."

 "I'm jibberish to you. Aren't I?"

"Yeah, but I like it." 

Going down

I fell
         ......
               .......
                       ................................
                                                       ...

in love. Not in you, exactly, but the deeper part of you that grows and changes and will one day become. I fell in love with the specks of you hidden within the spurts of vulnerability you showed. I fell deeper when you would put all your cards on the table. I swooned over your motivation to pursue what you wanted. That pushed me to do the same for myself. Even now, I'm ... at a loss. My want of you is deeper than you. It transcends because all these years and failed attempts later it hasn't waned. And I'm baffled by it. Why doesn't it disappear? Why does it haunt me? 

There are three options:
- it's real
- I'm in love with the concept of you more than you. Which doesn't make a difference! I see the difference in how I treat you. I don't hold up barriers with you because I have faith in you.
- I like this game.

Hands empty

There is some music that seems more valid and plays upon a part of me that isn't as touched by some songs when I listen without earphones. I feel that same dynamic applies to you. In my mind, you are immense, you are perfection, you are that sweet, intensive voice wooing me into the dark, but the reality is that you are the presence that is fleeting, temporary, and resistant to discussing the stickier parts of a relationship. So with the earphones on I romanticize you, slowly sink back into old habits of waiting for you, pleading for you. Thinking of you without the earphones, I see the backlash I have withstood hoping for the paradise you promise. At the end, my hands empty.

I like your presence in my life. It creates this confidence in me and resilience that empowers me to follow my mind. When you fail to re-emerge, I feel that hollowness in the foundation of myself that hinders me. Its like a foundation that I can't build up because the of the missing pieces of you in my life to build on. I look for other pieces to fill in the gaps, to make me semi-complete but they don't fit. At the end, my hands empty.

All my life, I've searching in the dark (guy's pov)

Kissing on this campus of brick barriers, high enough to sit on, have some fun make-out sessions. Following her hand in hand to her building, anticipating how much further this could go in private. Maybe that's why I'm restricted to public kissing. Stopping in a shaded walkway, turns and locks lips with me. Finally. I feel I can take a full breath and enjoy it. Her mouth cold (from drinking soda) against my warm tongue, my tongue searches for the coolness, brushing over each millimeter, taking it in, claiming the territory. I want to have free roam over her body. I hook my fingers into a belt loop on jeans over each hip, pull up gently, she gets the hint, jumps up the ledge while my laced fingers follow her body. Momentarily off my lips, I dive for another stepping into the embrace of her knees, my face at chest level. Hunched above me, her hair shrouds us in moving shadows. I take advantage of this slight privacy. My hand roams to her neck right above the hollow of her collar bone, gently jerk her jaw up to nestle a couple kisses on her neck and back up to devour her mouth. I want more. I need more to keep me satisfied longer, hit that peak of calm, and claim a delight. Inhaling kisses as dependence for breath. Eyes closed, searching in the dark, trying to reconcile how much I need more than this. I need the total control to have what I crave. Hoping a kiss, the perfect kiss will convince and tear away your will and self-control, live in the abyss I create, not be able to help yourself but submit to me and my desires. So I kiss you as tenderly as I can, as aggressively as possible, and as deeply as you allow.

How long must I wait for you?