I’ve always enjoyed reading about people who are in love, but most of all when that love is unrequited. Vivid pictures painted in details about a saucy diastema, the observed ritual of walking by a certain table every day to get a cup of water for paint, an unsolicited brush against a hip. Stories about awkwardness, weakness, burning desire.

Perhaps it’s because I can relate to these experiences, or because they make me feel like I’m less alone in my own clumsy dealings with the opposite sex. Even though there are countless stories written about unrequited love, there aren’t enough. For the few of us who are “oppressed by the figures of beauty”, as Leonard Cohen calls it, nothing makes us feel better. All we can do is silently commiserate with the words of those who share themselves in this way.

When I look through my old entries, it seems like most of them are about love or a torch I carry in one way or another, and how this affects me.

And sometimes I wonder if this is the reason why people come here to read my words.

In the dark, our bodies fit like puzzle pieces — face in neck, crest in valley, curve in curve. I’m completely vulnerable when she lets me love her like this. She brings my guard down.

It’s the way she makes me happy without trying. The way I’m filled with tenderness every time I feel the warmth of her skin against mine. The way her existence gives me hope for the rest of the world.

If I chose to fall back on old habits and kept my distance to protect myself, I wouldn’t know this ineffable feeling. I may get hurt, but it’s worth every moment I can be next to her.

Maybe she’s right, and I’ll feel differently by the time it’s necessary. Until then, there’s no use in fighting it.

My heart never gave me a choice.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

—He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, William Butler Yeats

She knows how much I’ve fallen for her.

And by giving her my heart in such a way, she’s sharing the burden. The last thing she wants to do is hurt me, and she thinks herself selfish for wanting to be held just so. But I know what I’m getting into. I know the risks.

There’s no point in denying ourselves the joy of what we have now. To be lying next to each other when we talk into the early hours of the day, bodies pressed against one another while the morning light washes over us, is worth any chance at being hurt. We can deal with the inevitable later.

So she treads softly, on me and my heart.

And rests her head on my chest when I hold her.

It’s a world where every song is a journey, every chord is more dulcet than the last, and I don’t want to, I need to dance.

It’s not a simple feeling. There’s so much to consider — new realizations, unfamiliar territory, questions of fate, unresolved proprieties, inevitable change — that it’s all a mix of emotions unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. But who says that life has to be simple? All I know for sure is that I love her, even if she doesn’t love me the same way.

And for now, I’ll wear this smile like my heart on my sleeve.

Our bodies burn like flames in an oven, so we kick off the covers. I slip my arm around her waist and press her body close to mine. She holds my hand to her chest, fingers wrapped around fingers, legs wrapped around legs.

The morning light comes in blue and soft and subtle through the window, and the stars begin to fade.

I want to hold her like this under a tree in the summer and pass the time in her company, alive to every moment we’re together. I want to hold her like this when the cars and streets are buried under snow outside, so we may truly know what it is to be warm and comfortable. I want to run my finger along the softness of her face, so I may learn every landmark and feature, and never forget. I want to read to her my favourite books on lazy Sunday afternoons, so I can take her to where they’ve taken me. I want to feel her breath against my skin, the breath that gives her life, and me joy. I want to wake up to find she’s not away in another bed, but next to me, lost in slumber, for there can be no other such simple happiness.

This is where I’m perfectly content, lost in a moment when time has stopped and nothing else matters.

But I know it won’t last forever. She’ll soon be gone. I won’t be the one to do these things with her, the one to love her the way she was meant to be loved, the one to love her as deeply as she deserves. There’s no use in thinking about it now.

The one who inspires me to create wonderful things, to make beauty as I see it in her, so that others may share in this feeling. If I had a million words to describe her grace, it still wouldn’t be enough.

I could be sad, but I’d rather be happy instead.

So as the sun begins to rise, I indulge myself a little longer, and hold her closer before drifting off to sleep.

While my mother always made it a point to stay involved in my life (to a fault), it was never because she loved me. She’s not someone who’s emotionally intelligent enough to understand what love is.

Which is why she tries to cling to me so desperately, even when I try so vehemently to avoid her. It’s the same way that some men or women only love the idea of marriage, instead of their spouses. They’re relationships based on all the wrong reasons.

Realizing this has made me wonder; did I ever actually love my girlfriends, or did I just love the idea of love?

Quand je vous aimerai?
ma foi, je ne sais pas,
peut-être jamais, peut-être demain,
mais pas aujourd’hui, c’est certain.

One day, he discovered that she loved him just as much as the day she left, and that every new man she sought for comfort was just another attempt to replace him; he was unlike anyone she had ever met before. But there was nothing that could be done; the pain had left him cold and unmoved.

And it’s only being on both sides of such an idea that allows him to accept this.

L’amour est un oiseau rebelle
que nul ne peut apprivoiser,
et c’est bien en vain qu’on l’appelle,
s’il lui convient de refuser

Suddenly, he came upon the realization that her beauty unintentionally entraps men, who are then led to their downfall by their own misguided ideas of love, and that he was simply another one of many. Not that it mattered anyway; to force such things is futile.

Tu ne l’attends plus, il est là!

I can gather all the news I need on the weather report.
Hey, I’ve got nothing to do today but smile.
Da-n-da-da-n-da-da-n-da-da and here I am
The only living boy in New York

Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where,
And we don’t know here.

—Simon and Garfunkle, The Only Living Boy in New York

Every day, we get caught up in our lives.

We adopt pets to give us a sense of family. We eat breakfast at work or in the car to save ourselves time so we can work some more. We scorn those who express emotion, we avoid eye contact with strangers on the street.

Everything we do — the food we eat, the movies we watch, the home team we cheer for, our coffee shop romances — they’re just trying to fill that hole, that gap that’s missing, the only way we feel alive.

We don’t slow down, we don’t figure things out. We don’t reflect and appreciate what we have.

Like strawberry cheesecake ice cream with a thick graham cracker swirl. Like the serenity of the snow that falls around us, when heaven decides to bless the earth.

Life gets in the way of living.

And now I realize just how guilty I’ve been of this. I’ve been looking for love, but never recognized it when I found it. All I ever wanted to do was lie in bed, look into your eyes, and go through my favourite albums with you. But I never did. And now I wonder. Why can’t we just live? We can’t we just love?

Sometimes you have to stop. You can’t capture everything. You need to throw yourself in.

A thousand kisses deep.

Assume as necessary.

Why is it so politically incorrect to show your feelings? Would it be inappropriate to tell you that I’m in love?

That your dimples are like hinges that purse your lips in the most adorable way, and I want to kiss them. That I want to have you here next to me, to feel the weight of your body pressing against mine. That I want to smell you on my fingers, I want to fold my sheets around you, I want to feel your curls under my hands as I lather and rinse.

Because I’m sick of being polite and I’m tired of propriety.

So let’s deal with this attraction. Let’s not ignore what’s between us.

Angel I can see myself in your eyes
Angel won’t you feel for me from your heart
Do return my heart to me
No don’t insist I’m already hurt

— Blonde Redhead, Elephant Woman

Yep. It’s over. Although she still doesn’t know.

Maybe it was just a phase. Maybe I’ve accepted the fact that she’s taken. Maybe we’re too similar. Maybe I’ve realized it would never work. Maybe I just love her less, the more I know her.

Or maybe it was just a phase. One of the many things cured by time.

It makes me wonder if I cling to such feelings simply because I love being in love, unrequited or otherwise. It’s like when you’re in a purely physical relationship with someone, and you start getting feelings for them. You wonder if you’re really in love with the person, or in love with the idea that you have someone with whom to go to bed, someone to kiss and kiss you back. It’s a blurry line, something you don’t figure out until you remove yourself from the situation.

Not that it matters. I’m over her.

And I’ve lost my inspiration.

“Love doesn’t end, just because we don’t see each other.”, she told him

“Doesn’t it?”, he asked.

“People go on loving God, don’t they? All their lives. Without seeing Him.”

“That’s not my kind of love.”

I realize that on days like this — when the wind is cutting through the seams of my jacket, when my stomach is so cramped that it twitches, when I’m uncontrollably nodding off to sleep on the bus, when my transfer expires before I can use it, when incompetence isn’t keeping my appointments — that I can’t call you. It just wouldn’t help.

You abandoned me when I needed you the most. I’ll never trust you with anything important again. Including me.

You may say you love me, but I don’t love you. Not anymore.

My love is (was) boundless.

Yours is of convenience.

In my book tonight, I was reminded of the time I was sitting on the floor of my room and you were lying on the bed when I felt the foundation shudder beneath me. I mapped the escape route in my head, thought of the coats cause it was the end of winter, and was about to grab your hand to lead us outside if the earth shook again, threatening to bury us in three stories of wood and concrete. I told you to be ready to run upstairs on my word. How I loved you then.

For in doing so, I reveal my vulnerability.

So I deleted your numbers off my speed dial. I took down your pictures. It was an in-the-moment thing.

I’m calm now, seeing things objectively, yet still undecided.

Part of me wants to believe we can still be friends. That we can still hang out without me depending on you for anything. But I’m not like that, and I don’t stay friends with those on whom I can’t depend.

I cried, not only because you weren’t there when I needed you, not only because you had a responsibility to my friends as well, but because I never allow those who hurt me so much to be a part of my life. Our friendship may be lost, and this is what upsets me the most. Perhaps it hurts so much because you were so important to me. I don’t want to lose that, but I’ll never forget what you did and I’ll never trust you again.

And if I can forgive you, you’ll know that I truly love you.