And so I long

Sometimes I feel like I hardly know you. But I want you, with unreasonable ferocity. Like a sickness, like the need for water. Like Paris for Helen. I'm laid low by irresistible longing. I study you in profile, on a tram, at lunch. I feel awkward and bumbling, like I've lost all those parts of me that make me certain, assertive.

I want you beyond reason. All illusions of my modernity leave me. I need to own, consume, worship and devour. I wouldn't think that what I've made of you in my mind could exist in a person. But there you are. There you are standing at the door to a dream, destined to never be real. I cannot walk through to you. But you can step through to me, just briefly. You can illuminate my world, make it like my fevered dreams, only for a time.

Perhaps it is for the best. Perhaps I'd burn in the brightness that you bring. Perhaps your light would be slowly extinguished by being with me. I am possessive. And jealous. I would never wish to cage you, or smother. But perhaps I would, with my longing, with my need. With my desperate desire to paint for my muse, a mural showing who she is to me.

And so I long.