This feels one-sided. I know it isn’t. I feel like you get how I’m feeling. I can’t tell you how I feel and you can’t tell me what’s on your heart in return. We’re already on the same wavelength. Isn’t that how all good love stories begin? With a connection that doesn’t quite make sense to the world but does inside the worlds we’ve created inside of our minds and hearts. You get me, I get you. I get how you’re feeling, you get how I do. Only comprehended through energy. Maybe the right song hits on the playlist.
Over and under, straight to your wonder … that’s it.
Truthfully, I feel foolish. I’m too grown to be throwing rocks and then hiding my hands. Tossing subliminals is for the meek and weak-hearted. Either I switch lanes or get side swiped. I do like how this feels. I sometimes don’t want to know if you feel the same way. Old me – that girl low in self-esteem, walking a straight line toward catastrophe – doesn’t want to get her hopes up. It never ends the way I want it to. I don’t often receive what my heart deserves. I’ve been wrong before. But back then, I carried false energy. Off-base about what love is, how love is supposed to feel, what love does to someone.
It no longer feels distant. It feels possible.
So maybe that’s why I can’t shake you. You represent the possibility of safety and empathy.
Even in our current form, I feel your desire to want to know that I’m safe.
Even in this thing we call us, you give a damn about me. Even if you don’t always say it.
Not because you don’t see the value in doing so. You’re just too bashful to express it in the way you want to.
You can tell me. I promise I won’t take it wrong. Some emotions and feelings oscillate between friendship and something more. I’ll put it in its rightful place.
Maybe it’s a distance thing. I want it so bad to be that. The miles apart make it all feel impossible. Even though I think you’d come for me. I just think you believe that I won’t.
I’d break every last rule for you. I really want to. Even the rules that keep me far away from all of what I feel. Fear is my idol; believing that it protects me from rejection, from scorn, from finding out that I’m indeed not good enough. From getting hurt. I know the many variations of hurt like the back of my hand.
I don’t believe you’d hurt me. I do think that you find me to be too sensitive. Too existential. Too raw. But that’s also what is attractive to you. You can’t reproduce a woman like me even if God gave you the specs Herself.
Maybe this is all a healthy delusion. I need to feel something about somebody’s son. The Creator’s way of reminding me that She didn’t create me as undesirable. Constant reminders that I’m worthy of love and of breaking down all of the walls. But you have your walls up and I don’t get it. I mean I do. That empathy thing. That safety thing.
I’m not afraid. You?
ciara roslyn-james 