because yes

as part of this ongoing and revelatory generative process, words must be written about sweetness. yes, that sweetness. words about an action, and about whom there was a great deal of conflict that broke into curiousness that broke into now. a variation of something that remains something, if that makes sense. and it deserves a space here.

for a while there was a fair amount of shame about the feelings that i had, that they somehow made me less of me. perhaps this is because they developed so suddenly and waned so laboriously. maybe because they were so foolishly, so haplessly, one-sided. definitely because they were embroiled in all the other emotions i was coping with at the time. regardless, i've come to realize that at the core of them was not some school kid's naive fantasy of love and reciprocity but a deep concern for another person and the capacity for friendship.

i knew you weren't over it.
i knew the loss was too great.
i knew you didn't feel the same.

still, in all of that i couldn't undo my concern, my empathy. i meant it when i said i wished i could absorb the pain. every time.

suddenly it came to a point where i was so scared of losing your friendship that it overshadowed my ability to sense the distance. but eventually i came to realize that my fear was about more than that. it was about facing the fact that how i appeared to you was not how i am and that how i actually am is not how i viewed myself before.

the last time we saw one another i realized how pathetic i had become, sitting there gutted and vulnerable and uncertain. for a while i'd forgotten that you weren't over it, that the lost was too great, that you'd never felt the same. it never occurred to me not to try and be there always for whatever, to adapt, to understand, to apologize. and finally it no longer felt empty.

such an inscrutable sweetness. even with you in my mouth i never fully tasted you. my body knew more than my heart.

peace,