This is the original end to yesterday’s post.  I couldn’t delete it completely, but I couldn’t post it either.  Sam tells me those are the things I need to post.  So.

Lately, she makes me feel very weak.  Even Sam has commented it to me in front of her.  “She always acts strange when you’re over.  It’s a thing she has,” Sam lightly tells Clara.

I swallow the flash of anger toward Sam—and toward myself—and I isolate.  I’m frozen, thinking of what Clara will think of me now that she knows she makes me nervous.  Male sex symbols don’t get nervous.  I’m certain she’ll any minute realize I’m still madly in love with her.  Then, in a shoddily-executed plan, she’ll instantly cut off physical and virtual contact, thereby extracting herself from my life, all because she doesn’t want to “keep hurting” me with her continued presence.  At least, that’s what I’ve done to guys.

The Buddhist and the writer in me tell me it’d only be karma, poetry.

This is only one nightmare scenario flashing through my head as I hold my breath waiting for her reaction.

I’m still waiting for her response.  She sometimes surprises me.

Just not tonight.  My heart broke as we all three talked past Sam’s comment.  I noted she didn’t insist on talking about my feelings.

I know it wasn’t her responsibility to insist.  Nor should I have hoped so much from her.  They’re my feelings and my responsibility to defend.

I just hoped.

That hope represents a level of neediness I’m not comfortable feeling.

Actually, I retract that.  Feelings are never wrong; and while we’re wrong when we ignore them, we’re sometimes wrong to express them.  Instead, I’d better say, it’s a level of neediness I shouldn’t ever express, though I can’t go on without addressing it.

It’s why it wouldn’t work out.  It wouldn’t work.

And I don’t want her.  We’re too different.  I’m not like her.

I want to kiss you. “How are you?”

She smiles and says pretty things about her life.

I want to say pretty things, too.

I can’t think of any.