I Don’t Want You Because

You came along at a bad time – or a good time, no one can really tell which is which. From the moment those handcuffs clicked shut on our wrists and you looked me in the eye I knew that there might be something binding us tighter than those cheap plastic entrapments. And at that moment I also decided that I didn’t want you, couldn’t want you. I still don’t. I don’t want you because I cannot want you.

I don’t want you because I don’t know how to want you. It was a long time ago that I knew what I had to do when wanting someone. I have forgotten the weight of obligation, thrown them off into the wind with the coming of spring. I have let go of the stress that accompanies desire. I don’t want you because you warm my body and not my heart – but more importantly I don’t want you because I cannot allow you to get deep enough to even try.

I don’t want you because you deserve better. Because I am nothing but a fleeting flash of somewhat brilliant light in an otherwise grey existence, and this gets extinguished, sooner rather than later. Because I am the representation of everything that can go wrong, and you need something, someone better than me to fill in the holes in your life.

You know this, and I know this, and I don’t want you because I don’t care for the guilt that follows. This is a competition of wills, and I don’t want you because losing isn’t my thing.

I don’t want you because even as you don’t need me, I don’t need you. I don’t want you because, even as I as don’t need you, I still want what little we have. I’m happy to do what we’re doing. I’m happy to let you use me, because I’m using you too, and you know it. It is an expedient solution, if an impermanent one.

I’m happy to smile knowingly at you when we make eye contact across a crowded room, acknowledging with a mischievous grin what we know that others don’t. I’m happy to lean in close, tip your chin up with my index finger in the way that you so love, stare you down and then kiss you ever so lightly on the lips – but only when we’re alone. I’m happy to run my tongue up the outside of your ear and make you shiver, deep down and from the inside out. I’m happy to keep you warm at night, as long as I get to leave before the sunrise reminds us of the emptiness of what we have. I’m happy to do all these, on one condition; that I do it from a distance, present but never truly there. And so I’ll keep on at it, for as long as this serves our purposes.

I don’t want you, and I’ll keep telling myself that because I need a constant reminder. I don’t want you, and you’ll never know why. I don’t want you because I refuse to give you the power to destroy me.