I Keep Touching Your Fire As If This Time It Won’t Burn

I keep going back to you even when I know it isn’t worth it. I tell myself to stay away, but I’ve never been one to take my own advice.

You’ve become the quicksand I keep thinking I can make it through, as if I haven’t already been sucked down before. You’ve become the beehive I keep poking at, as if this time I’ll be able to out run the bees before I get stung. You’ve become the fire I keep touching, as if this time it won’t burn me as badly.

I know what I’m getting myself into, but for some reason I keep telling myself things will be different this time. Even though I already know the outcome, I still can’t help myself.

I tell you I don’t want to talk to you because it’s easier to lie to you than to myself.

I tell you I’m not interested because I want you to think I’m strong and I don’t need you, but in reality I lie awake in bed hoping you’re thinking of me, too. I tell you I don’t want to talk to you because I’m trying to convince myself that’s the right thing to do, even though I’d give anything for one more night with you by my side. I tell you it’s better this way, to go our own ways, but secretly I hope for your call to tell me you miss me, too.

You’re the tornado and I’m the storm chaser that hangs around a little too long and gets sucked up by you every time for admiring your destruction.

I know you’re bad for me. I know I should walk away. I know the outcome will always remain the same, but I’m desperate for you. I crave your touch, I cherish your words and I yearn for a world where we’re good for each other.

I naïvely think that this time it will get better, that maybe you will have changed and things will work between us this time. But it never gets better. It’s always the same burn, the same let down and the same feeling of insanity because nothing ever changes. Yet I still expect a different result every time I start lingering back to you.

I know it’s time I stop reaching through the same fence and allowing the same dog to bite my hand, just like I’ve let him do so many times before. But now it’s become a game, the same game I’ve been losing for years.

I’m waiting for the day where I can reach my hand in the fire and realize this time it doesn’t burn.

But if that day never comes, I just hope I learn before I’m covered in burns that will always remind me of you.