I wrote this a few months ago, and posted it on a different blog. I thought I’d share it here, just for the hell of it.

There’s a girl – there’s always a girl – flitting in the periphery of my consciousness. Beautiful and transcendent, the desire of my lonely heart. I yearn for her, I ache for her, and see myself falling for her.

Falling…

falling…

falling….

But…

…all I see is pain in my future because of her.
A girl like her never falls for a guy like me.
I’m being assaulted by those around me.
“She wants you to ask her out,” they cry.
“Why haven’t you asked her out?”

But can they know the truth? That I cannot dare to hope? That kind of hope is seductive, but ultimately it kills the soul. I refuse to surrender myself to that masochism. Pain has stolen enough from me. Once more, and there won’t be anything left of me but a withered husk to be blown away by the wind, destined to be forgotten by all, especially she whom commands my desire.

And I cry in the late night vigil, weeping for a love that I’m unable to give, a love that exists solely in the state of what if.

Perhaps I’m nothing more than a coward and deserve nothing better than to become embittered by loneliness, ravaged by time until I’ve forgotten tenderness and emotion, only to die as I’ve always feared, utterly alone.

For what is love without risk?

Joy without pain?

Hope without disappointment?

But I’ve grown timid is my despair, unable to open myself to the possibility, unable to see anything other than failure, and beyond that, oblivion.

I wish to sleep, to forget my troubles in the comfort of my dreams, but I will not be comforted. Not in this. She haunts me and all I want is to rest. Rejecting her may be my greatest folly, but I see no other way.

You see…

I cannot be hurt again. One more would will be the end of me, and she hasn’t earned the right for me to risk annihilation. If this be a test, I know I’ve failed.

But yet I live, though hope I have forsaken.

Short stories and other works