Wanted

It’s better this way. Really I probably ought to thank you, for the sake of us. I have trouble with lines, and you... well, I haven’t felt so tangled up in them in a long time.

That’s why they call it a crush right? Because you usually end up feeling destroyed. Like the air has been squeezed out of your lungs. Like every bone in your body has been ground into dust.

It’s better that you’re just words on a page. It’s best I don’t always get what I want.

What did you want?

Do you want the raw honest truth or a vague palatable answer to preserve the echo of friendship we have left?

Raw.

I wanted you to tell me I was the most beautiful creature you’d ever encountered, in all my iterations. That my image was traced into the back of your eyelids and it was me in your blinks. I wanted you to admit you saw me in the moments you let your focus wander, like a victory screen burned into a mid-2000s TV.

I wanted you to say you knew we weren’t end game, but you were so deep in me, drowning in our shared secrets and entwined souls that you didn’t care if we were tragic. You couldn’t bear not having me, especially in the moments I felt like I was yours.

I wanted to live curled up in your brain, tucked in the space between creation and concern, always a whisper in every thought you had and everything you made. I wanted you to know you had that space in mine. I wanted to consume your thoughts, your dreams, your fantasies. 

I wanted you to listen to my voice when you lay in bed, seeking out every soft breath and cadence, paying far too much attention to every deliberate intimacy, every implication. I wanted you to imagine my lips ghosting over your skin as I waxed poetic about this thought or that. 

I wanted your yearning, and I wanted your poetry. Most importantly I wanted your passion.

I wanted your attention.

I wanted to sit silently together while thousands of miles apart as we built legacy.

I wanted to hear my name on your lips with that unique way the shape of your vowels settle between my thighs, hushed as my ears strained for sounds of your flesh while I told you all the ways I wanted your body.

I wanted to memorize the sounds you make in ecstasy. The way your breathing evens out. I wanted to straddle you in a mountain cabin.

I wanted your moans and good mornings. I wanted your violence. I wanted your tenderness.

I wanted to stand in the shell of us without fearing the floor falling out below me.

I wanted your highs and lows.

I wanted the mundane. I wanted to know your favourite breakfast food and the day you felt the happiest you’d ever been in the world.

I wanted to know your hopes. I wanted to know your fears and nightmares.

I wanted turmoil and inspiration. I wanted to inspire you in turn, I wanted to be witness to your greatness. I wanted to watch all your dreams come true.

I wanted to matter to you. I wanted to be a fixed point, an important part of your story.

I wanted to feel. I didn’t want it quite like this.

I wanted far, far too much.