To F.
You're not the first person I've kissed but you are the first person I want to spend the rest of my life kissing. And it scares me so. I've never been loved - just rejected, at all my attempts of loving, and ever since then I've been afraid, down to the bone, of commitment. Of opening up to someone, of feeling love, of letting myself be loved in return. I've been used and abused, and manipulated, and made fun of. I'm telling you all this so I can emphasize how big a gesture it is on my side to admit that I have feelings for you, that I am willing to make myself vulnerable to you, and to you only. I've been strong for so long that I crave being weak for a little while. So, I'm baring my chest here, and handing you a knife, hoping you won't carve my heart out like the rest of them, scrap whatever remnants of a heart there are from the hole in my ribcage. I've never been domestic, so you need to understand how big a deal it is that I crave your intimacy -- not just having ***, it's not about having ***. I crave waking up next to you, with your arm cuddled to my body, with your leg thrown over my legs: I crave exposing myself to you. Hearing something on the radio and thinking, *Oh, I need to remember this so I can tell him. Seeing something in a window shop and buying it for you just because I know you'll like it. Your being able to order takeout for me from any place, without ever hesitating. Going jogging with you early in the morning, before I've had my coffee and you - your tea. Curling up on the couch watching stupid movies. Touching you just to reassure myself that I'm safe. This, to me, is more intimate than ***. This, to me, is scarier than ***. I used to think I was just lusting after you. Until you held my hand and I knew no one else's hand had ever or would ever fit better in mine. Until you pressed the side of your body to mine like you wanted to be closer to me that physics could allow and I knew I would never feel safer. Until you ran your fingers in circles over my bare knee and I knew this was the most intimate I'd ever felt with someone. Until I read my poetry and you looked at me like I'd put up all the stars in the sky. I am terrified. I am downright cold-blooded terrified of what I feel, and all this, this want, this need that creeps up my body, in every cell. It scares me more than death, more than oblivion, and what scares me even more is that you will take the knife and sink it into my chest down to the hilt, and won't even blink. That you will hurt me like all the rest, that you will leave, or make fun of me, or that you will never love me back. I don't know if love is the right word but I want to know your greatest fears, secrets and desires, and I want you to know mine. I also know I'll never send this to you because I've learned to be strong and to hide my feelings, and to tell myself that this, too, will pass. I'm a coward, because I'd rather be torn up by the pain of watching my love for you die a slow, tortured death than face rejection. I'd rather suffer from the unknown than from the dull, numb hurt of knowing you don't love me. And I will be alone, always. I don't have in me the bravery to face my greatest fear, so I'll let it eat me up. I'll keep myself warm on candlelight because I'm too afraid to light a fire.