The Terminal Flame

I fought with everything in me to bury what was left of us, to throw enough dirt over the past that I could finally walk away without looking back. I convinced myself the ground had gone cold, that time had done its merciful work and turned the memory of you into dead ash. But seeing you tonight shattered the whole delusion in an instant. The second my eyes found you, I felt the sudden, terrifying heat beneath the surface, proving that those coals had been burning red-hot all along, just waiting for a breath of air to set the whole forest ablaze again.

​I love you, and the sheer, unmitigated weight of that truth terrifies me. I yearn for you with a hunger that feels like an open wound, a constant pulling in my chest that no distance or logic can soothe. You confuse me more than any human being ever has or ever will. You are a puzzle I cannot solve, a labyrinth I keep walking into even though I know there is no way out, leaving me entirely stranded between what we are and what I desperately wish we could be.

​Unfortunately, hopelessly, I am in love with you, and there is no cure for it. It is terminal. It sits in my blood like a slow poison, working its way through every vein until every breath I take belongs to you. The way this love tears at my heart, ripping through my ribs and shredding whatever strength I have left, is a brutal, relentless agony. And yet, the horrific truth is that this destruction is still infinitely better than the cold, empty nothingness of living without you. I sit here in the quiet darkness, wrecked by the sight of you, wishing with every broken piece of my soul that you were mine.