she glared angrily but i wasn’t able to see the intended victim of her evil gaze

chances are it was aimed at me

it always seemed either aimed at me, eventually guided towards me, or i was just the unintended victim of her need to make someone the scapegoat

I ran through the list of things i had done recently, the words that slipped out of my idiot mouth, hoping to be reassured i was transgression free

this time at least

the cocktail of hormones coursing through me whenever in her presence is enough shifts in dynamic to last another person a year or a decade or a century or a millenia or an eon or whatever quantifies forever

she sends me in this mental trip that used to be fun

it used to be love

it used to be a lot of things

she was playing the innocent and i was in the professor role

then she was playing hard to get and i was head over heels falling a tumble through the inexplicable gravitational fluctuations of emotional attachment

then she gave in and fell in love back which made me slide headfirst into this need and parasitic kind of hunger that threatened to consume me like a cancer, but it wasn’t as bad as cancer makes it sound even though it was as bad cancer makes it sound

i let everything else fall to the wayside like you do when you first fall in the damnedable l word, but it felt like something more than l

it was all the l words combined

lecherously longing, lingering lacsadaisically looking luridly, lust, love, limited, lamenting

if it had an l, i imbibed of it

and she was the same

we would blow off the world and have sex all morning, stagger weakly to make nourishment and leave to rot on the counter as we allowed hunger for each other consume us

at first it was great but soon it hurt both of us to walk, i felt bruised and she must have been feeling the same as i did my best to lick that little nub of pleasure off her in totality

it went on for weeks like this and i couldn’t find a thing to complain about as i sat with a bag of ice on my crotch and she walked around barely dressed and laughing as the bag of ice shifted with every step

it might not have necessarily been perfect but when we used our tongues to communicate wordlessly it worked

but then our tongues started working with words and at first it still held water

but she didn’t really want what i really wanted even though at the time our wants weren’t so far apart

she hated the candied words of l that spilled forth whenever my mind turned to her which it always seemed to do and i hated that those sweetened words tasted like her skin and smelled of her hair, and as the fire grew in me i watched it cool in her eyes

she didn’t want forever, she was content in right now but in her i saw the vast stretches of infinity and she said that was too much

so i bottled the words, like a bottle of pop she would shake me and shake me until the carbonation build up made me feel like i was going to burst

we both fell into withdrawn silence

neither willing to share anymore for fear of making the other explode

me in a shower of confetti

her in a fit of rage

and it wasn’t good or healthy to live that way but once we had found each other it was hard to convince ourselves to turn off the magnetic pull and simply fall apart

so she dodged my words and i dodged her glares in an intricate dance that any onlooker would cringe at

and that is what killed us

she wanted now and i wanted forever, and in our stubborn refusal to see the other we faded from each other’s view

her constantly checking the clock and me scanning the stars

but if she walked back in here today i would give up my pursuit of eternity and find the center of now

too little too late as I feel her, the her that curled up with her head in my chest, the her that faded away in search of a better right now away from the me that was all consumed with a steady forever

too much too quickly too little too late