Just because we never had a label or put a name to whatever it was, to whatever it is, doesn’t mean we weren’t anything. I’ve had a lot of somethings and most of those never came close to whatever electric storm brewed between him and me.

I couldn’t come close to describing whatever it was I felt when we were both in the same room. It was something between heat, and electricity and the perfect combination of alchemy. Sometimes I’m afraid that same chemistry would still overtake my body if I ever found him near.

I first met him in my early teens, years later kissed him for the first time when I was 18. It’s one of the most sentient feelings that still surfaces to memory. It’s been years since then, and during those years, he was always there, sometimes as a friend, sometimes as more. What to call what he was to me, I still don’t know. He was that star I lusted over for years, that star I could never reach. I never came close to being more than just a warm body and good company to him; and sometimes I was his favorite secret to keep.

Some days, I miss him too much, think about him more than I should, more than he ever deserved for me to. On those days I go back to a poem I once wrote about him, to six specific lines from that piece, and when I think of him they replay in my head:

“We weren’t lovers,
we weren’t friends,
we were the in between
that ached everywhere,
we were the most beautiful words
always left unsaid.”

But somehow, I think he always knew, and we were only that, and never either, and never more, because he simply didn’t want to. For a long time, he resided in a huge region of my heart, for a long time there was nothing that I wanted more than his hand in mine, to be more than just a friend who occasionally shared his bed.

I know he cared about me in his own way, and eventually I learned to categorize him into only a friend, an old friend – one I care for deeply, even now. But before I ever accomplished doing so, and before I let go of any feelings I had for him, it was hard to see him in relationships, to be the girl that was just a friend but a little more than that between girlfriends, between his doubts; to be the girl that was only just that.

We are all queens, and when our hearts are screaming for more, we owe it to them to listen. It’s perfectly acceptable to keep it casual, simple, and easy, and fun, when there is no emotional risk involved, but when you feel yourself burning away for someone you can’t have, who can’t possibly give you what you need, you’ve got to be gentle to your heart, and move on to a different flower that will. You, beautiful girl, deserve to be more than just a kept secret, a warm body, and skin for a man to find himself in.