I can barely sit still enough to write this. My restless body feels like a live wire, electrified and ready for the contact with you that will bring me release in an explosion of sparks. I can't focus; I can't think of anything but you.

I don't have to fear I'll ruin this, because I lack the power to do so. You're holding the control, and I've never felt so free as under your firm hands.

The gratitude I feel for what you have promised, and already begun to allow me, is inexpressible. For giving me this fantasy, I would kneel at your feet and do all your bidding. You need only ask.

All I want is to sit down and write you love letters. To pour all the emotion and adoration you stir in me into a form that can be neatly typed, ended, and filed away. It's what I wish I could do with us: put all those memories into a little box so I could take them out and savor them whenever I'm sad or miss you.

Yet, that isn't true. It's you I want, not some dusty, perfect recollection living in my own head. I already wake each morning with your name on my lips, usually having clasped you to me in dreams. I bed down each night imagining your none-too-gentle caresses, and they're no better for being unreal. Though our incompatibilities, our failures, don't matter then, they hardly do in our real moments either.

I sense the pain underneath your confident words, and your vulnerability. I would find that boy inside you and hold his hand, and show him the man you're becoming. And whisper him promises you don't need to hear yet...about wanting to care of you, and stand at your side. Pledging to make you happy and successful, and eventually, to love you. Not forever; I'm not so naive as to believe that. But deeply, and perhaps for a period of time that won't be inconsequential to either of us.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

-Anais Nin

I loved you that night. It was the romance novel kind of love, the kind only sensible when considered late at night while curling up in a sensuous armchair and wearing a satin gown. The kind that doesn't do so well under bright lights and rational inspection. No, not what I usually mean when I say "love," but I suppose I can't go through life constantly requiring footnote definitions for words I use. Sometimes connotations must be accepted, and in this case I won't fight them.

I'll clarify, though, because fleshing out this definition will be a sweet exercise in remembrance. And as my round figure can attest to, I'm always up for savoring the taste of something sweet. And your mouthfuls are the most succulent I've enjoyed for some time.

It's less about you; it's how you make me feel: amazing. Your touch drives away all thought, save anxiety about when I'll experience it next. Longing for that touch propels me uncooperatively through each day. I'm restless until I see you, but even more restless then, as I'm forced to wait for your approach. Our conversation in the presence of others, where touch is forbidden, pushes me nearly to a breaking point. Then there's the pain of your indifference, knowing that my anxiety has prevented me from burdening you with the complementary preoccupation. It's a bittersweet pain, though, which helps keep the real pleasure from becoming too saccharine.

I want you frequently and for a long time, so you can continue to stir these intensities in me. It's to be expected; perhaps what happens when one looks across instead of down. This isn't stability or quiet comfort. It's not a habitual routine that includes a 10pm bedtime. Not a lifetime emotional bond. Not a couple that everyone says seems so happy, or even that anyone even knows about.

I will take whatever you want to give me and gently ask for more. Because, for me of the rational decisions and the easily-acquired devotions, it's never been like this. Unbearable. Consuming. Breathtaking.

I wouldn't trade it. Or you.

I have wild, uncontrollable emotions. My mind thinks that by giving them free reign occasionally, making them suffer through the messes they create, and encouraging their full disclosure at all times, it's steadily gaining control. My poor mind is so wrong; my emotions are feral.

They're taking fairy tales and romance novels and using them to draft my fantasies. Something so wrong can be so right, they say. Complete satisfaction can be found in devotion to another, they say. Intense, fleeting fireworks are worth the long darkness that will certainly follow.

My mind reads these proposals. It realizes the workers are getting bored. It sends them out to try to support my heart's efforts. When they see it's a suicide mission of shocking magnitude, they try to leave (and save what they can), but by then the heart won't let them. The heart, my heart, takes perverse pleasure in bloody massacres.

My forces are dwindling. Battles end more quickly, and with fewer casualties, because the rallying contingent is smaller each time. Damage is less noticeable, because each new fight just adds to the pre-existing ruins.

I'm waiting to run out of troops; waiting to hit the bottom that keeps things from getting worse. I'm chasing that final, ultimate pairing of hope and betrayal that can make me truly indifferent. I want to be numb, at least until the fire finds me that's worth enduring the ice. (And when even the hope in this qualification is gone.)

Damien Rice - Grey Room

If it were up to me, I would not depend on you for anything.

"It is up to you."