An Impossible Possibility

I stopped wondering for many days after that night I touched your face and your words left a burning sear on my heart. I hated you for a long time after that because I was so angry at the self-sacrifice and depth with which I gave myself to you and your resulting indifference. My heart was stifled because I silenced its anguished cries, and I became hardened stone.

But now each time I look at you I can see again the unsure smile, the tentative questioning of what is going on in my head. Every time I see her a thought runs through my mind: of the warmth you feel when you put your arm around her waist, your eyes closed as you smell the shampoo in her hair, the quiet conversations you have with your gazes as you sit in silence in your car.

I wonder if I could ever be her. If we could have the same intimacy I longed for, once in the past. I don't wish for it any longer because I know what you are like now, but I can't help but wonder about the sweetness and goodness I saw; whether it could be prolonged and sustained; whether I could ever learn to give myself to you again.

I shut myself up when you are around because it's still painful sometimes to know we will never sit together and love each other and be one. I wonder what it'd be like to reach out and touch the dimple in your cheek, smooth the crease on your forehead when you are concentrating, close your light brown eyes shut with my fingers and feel your hands pressing my ribcage. I wonder what it would be like if we grew together as friends, and shared worries and hopes and fears straight and raw from the heart; not as we do now - exchanging strained and polite hellos and composed faces; and all I am thinking of when I see the back of your head on the stairs is "Are you wondering what my hair would feel like under your fingers? How my voice would sound like on the telephone? Whether I look beautiful when I sleep?"

I wish I could open your heart and read it like a book, ( ). I know you have a million things waiting to be said.