when i burned

and learned.

why bother thinking that something could mean the same to someone else as it does to you? why did i bother missing [xxxxxxxx] so much during europe, thinking about [xxx] nearly every night, wanting to come home just so see [xxx]? why why why? was i lead, blind, by a warm hand down the wrong path? was everything [xxx] said truly empty words, every quiver of [xxx] lips, every shape of [xxx] hands, every pulse of [xxx] body simply the wind of the moment? did it all leave as soon as it came? how is that possible?

i didn't want to come home from europe because i missed my bed or american food or the 100 degree weather (which is about as pleasant as rubbing naked against a cactus). i wanted to come home because i missed [xxx]. of course, i dare not tell [xxx] that. i would also never dare tell [xxx] that i nearly didn't go to europe so that i wouldn't lose spending one day with [xxx]. or that i was frightened because i looked at how much i missed [xxx] in three weeks, and thought about the four years i'd be gone.

i'm not depressed. and, sadly, i'm not surprised, either. i just thought i knew [xxx] better than that. i didn't think [xxx] was the kind of person who would do those kinds of things with someone for whom she had no feelings at all in that manner. and i like the old decrepit fool i am allowed myself to feel something chaotic and calm, destructive and beautiful, for [xxx]. i'm not sad so much as i am disappointed, in everything. not in [xxx] entirely. i don't know, i just thought perhaps something would work nicely before i had to leave for the great beyond. but for some reason i wasn't surprised. i knew that nothing for me is ever reciprocated. it can never be as simple as i hope or imagine it to be. there's a very dark part of me that doesn't even want to take the chance that it could work with someone, once, in the future, and live a recklessly lonely life in an apartment in paris, anonymous and unknown, cloaked in self-cast solitude until my sun sets for good.

and it doesn't matter who it is, whether it's your best friend or someone you just met, being told that [xxx] doesn't want what is going on, what you (or I, in the case) consider something special, something unique, something at all, definable or not, to continue...well, clearly, obviously, it cuts you somewhere much deeper than you expected. but especially when it's someone who is already that deep in your heart, anyway.

vino is right. it's a blessing and a curse. but the blessing is fleeting and light. the curse is heavy and prophetic. yes, her and i would have had to part ways one way or another, be it as friends or more than that. but the curse is a foretelling of the fact that my emotions will always, instead of connecting me with a woman, push me away from her.

i'm certainly not mad enough or hurt enough to not talk to her. i'm just disillusioned. but what hurts is that, while i'm upset and disappointed, i am not shocked. i expected this, somehow, on some level, because i know her inside out; i know the meaning of her every whim and breath, nearly. and i sensed this, of course. i just hoped that all those moments that could have convinced me otherwise were enough to outweigh my doubt.

another mini-poetry/song collection to be filed away under the heading:

"LOVERS FOR A DAY".

is that all it ever is? anyway, it's all i ever have to look back on: the art i created in the wake of her (whoever she is) loveliness and how she made me feel, one way or another. and i'm not heartbroken. i love her and still do (whether it's platonic or not, i don't know). i just wish it could have continued the way it did until i went away to school. perhaps so that i would feel i was truly leaving something amazing behind, forever cast in amber. one single happy memory that will have no shadow cast over it.

but because life is a rising and a setting, a break and an end of day, everything that stands in sight of the sun will be cursed with a shadow.

even us, my dear.

even me.