I love you like an atheist makes the sign of the cross; out of reflex, with no real hope of finding salvation or heaven.

 

I watch you like I’m a firefly trapped in a jar, sometimes envying the finality of the moth that was free enough to find its own flame to ride into peace.

 

I find you in the lines of love stories, the clink of a knife upon a glass, in proclamations left unsaid and swallowed like cyanide dipped in honey.  You are the salt in the ocean of my own eternity and I’m coughing you out as I drown on us. 

 

You ask me how I am, and I climb over barbed wire emotions to tell you that “I’m ok” and I then curse my own eyes - for their unholy betrayal of me.  I find a point in the room and focus upon it, as my heart stands next to me like an invisible man genuflecting at your altar.  I hope that you think I do not care

 

Alone, I ponder my reflection in the backs of spoons and wonder who I am without you.

 

I have the defeat of Cupid on my breath, and the belief that I only have pretty words and agony to share with you – and you – and I – deserve more than that.

 

Love deserves more than that.

 

Tonight you are the sunshine and I am the full moon.  We will encircle the same world but never touch each other. 

 

Ged Thompson.