The Spark and the Fire

Speech has a tendency to be taken out of context, to be muddled by propriety and fear. This is the written word. This is honesty. This is my mind.

Time passes and circumstances change. People change, they grow apart and up and away. It's only natural. But above or perhaps below all this there is a spark. Some connection which means that every time you smile at me I smile back the way I did the first time it happened, it's a simple pleasure, happy and foolish and I don't want for it to go away.

But we're not the same people as we were a year ago, a part of me wishes that we could be but I honestly believe we're better people now. Except that I have no idea what we're doing. There's a gnawing fear that I'm a bad person for not being able to give you up as a friend, when while I accept our terminal friendliness I always see a remnant of something more which is simultaneously beaten back by rationality and terror. Because if I act, if I breathe a word of the confusion and hurt and laughter and list of things I've been meaning to tell you, then something will change. Like it changed when I pushed you out of my front door when I wanted more than anything to have you stay, Because strong though I am, and good though I may be with words, I don't know how to tell you that I can't choose between being a friend to one of the few people who challenges me intellectually, makes me laugh who I can talk to for hours but have to hold back from, and telling you everything and perhaps losing everything, which for a long long year I've tried, and failed, to forget.

I'm not a bad person. But for tonight I have to be a weak one.