when I stop

When I stop circling round the problem of you I will let go.

I want to let go. I want to move on without the problem of my lust dragging behind me, snail trail. Everyone can follow the silvery slipperiness and find you at the end of it.

I am embarrassed by this.

I am in two minds. I see-saw between this double-think. I think of Orwell. Enemy and friend at the same moment. We have always been at war and we have never been at war. And so I circle, hooked on the idea of you and it is beneath me, this erratic behaviour.

On his death bed and his love declared and me knowing that this was something that could not be returned in the same way.

I love you, just not in the way you want me to love you.

And so I wrestle with myself, jumping between the lover and the beloved, knowing that there is no happy solution, that the only way out is to slink off to somewhere else, dragging my snail trail of desire along with me.

I will let you go. And, as is my style, I must let you go completely and utterly. And all this love, all this sad wasted love.

He died with all that sad, wasted love. I move away, love hissing out of me like I'm punctured. Why can I not just re-frame this. Why can I not just hold this love out like a present or a shared secret? Why is it all fisted in my womb like a cancer? Why does it hurt in my groin? Did it hurt in his groin? His love for me?

I am letting it go. Honestly. Just a few more days in the water and I will climb out and towel off. Because it makes me cry when I stop. It makes me lonely. I miss it like tobacco or like alcohol. I miss it like some people miss heroin. I miss it like he missed me, fiercely, irrationally and without any hope of repayment.