wrung out

I am all wrung out by longing. I am buffeted between conflicting states. At once, I am swelling like dough under a damp cloth into the idea of you. It is a physical thing, some strange alchemy that blends smell and flesh into some pheremonal melting pot. I harbour secret flashes of possible outcomes which inevitably include climbing into your lap, fully clothed, but with no underwear under my skirt. I imagine hand holding in libraries or lying on the grass or in the cinema. These random images are thrown up at the most inappropriate moments, in company, on the bus, at work. I catch my breath before it comes out in a moan or a little sigh.

At the same time there is a rock solid care that might be forged in volcanic turmoil. It is familial, the kind that you would imagine a big sister to have for a beloved brother. I would fight for you, scuff my knees, if you called in the middle of the night you would find me at your side without any subtext. I can be distracted from my longing by the permanency of love.

Still, I would eat you if I could. I would carve through your flesh with a spoon and gorge myself on you. You bring out the best in me and I cling to the steady ledge of your presence, threatening to fall off into the abyss of my own madness.

I am mad with the lust which feels like it will consume me. I turn in on myself, wondering what I might do to illicit the same kind of passion from you. I would never follow through with any of it, I suppose, but the idea that my emotions are reciprocated would bring me some sense of balance. Even as I say this I see the pattern in it. I know. I am not blind. You will never want me.

I blame my physicality, my age, my erratic nature. I would remake myself into someone else to catch your attention. I wonder if you would love a thinner girl. That pretty blond thing I saw you with with sunken eyes and skin that looked as if you would bruise it with a glance. I would carve myself up into pieces to have you look at me that way. I would stop eating. I would run. I would learn to wear makeup and perfume like a real girl. I would be deconstructed.

But, strangely, I am also comfortable with myself at the same time. When we connect over literature or art there is no bodily me left, there is just a comfortable fit, your opinion and mine, different but accepting. It is the hand-holding that I was longing for. I feel suddenly perfect and in no great hurry to change. When we discuss a book we are lying side by side and there is a gentle cradling and there is no madness in it.

I will make art out of this. What use is a great passion if it remains unspoken. You say that you once had a crush so strong that you couldn't eat. I know how this is because my chest hurts and I am tearing myself into pieces.

Still, I am writing and it is not lost. I have an open book to stuff it all into. I will write it and then it will be there where it cannot hurt us, trapped in the body of a work, calcifying, a historical document. Until then I cross my fingers and hope that you will remain tolerant of my erratic behaviour. I am just writing through it. Surely you know how this is.