Burning legs, aching to bring me closer to you.
Taking the long way to pass you by, to have you smile at me,
to have you notice me.
Arms wrapped around torsos to shield from the rain
and the hurt, the underlying ache and the bright, stinging
pain of affection.
Fluttering feelings, like butterflies in the pit of my stomach,
betraying my fondness of everything that was you.
Spilled ink and tears, clichéd attempts to make you care if I was hurting, to try and make you love me.
Nonchalant responses and joking tones
masking the enormity of the love I felt for you,
the love I feel for you.
Experiencing every feeling so intensely that I thought my bones would shatter from the weight of all the emotions swimming in my head
and in my heart.
I didn't think that it was possible for me to feel so deeply,
to be so utterly immersed in the desire to belong to someone
that songs and sonnets couldn't dream of articulating
the dizzy haze of ecstasy that washed over me
every time I was close to you.

A rush of chemicals and the firing of synapses
couldn't be all there was to it.
How do you explain the suffocating weight on my chest,
the piercing pain and consuming agony
that tore me to shreds when I heard the news,
when I heard that you were leaving me behind?

You cared for me, but not in the way that I wanted you to.
I wanted you to want me with the same burning passion,
with all the desperation of a man on fire trying to extinguish the flames that engulfed him.
A lovestruck teenager willing to tear themselves apart,
to fight every atom in their body and destroy themselves from the inside out just to numb themselves,
to make their heart impervious to your attacks.
Each smile you sent my way was a crushing blow that tore down
the walls I had built to protect me from you.
I thought that making myself hate you would stop it,
the searing anguish that could only come from unrequited love.

Now, all that is left is the fading memory of your hazel eyes
and the scars I carved trying to bleed out my love for you.