A Love Letter On the Tip of My Tongue

To you

Every love I have never been entitled to

The ones I can never tell if I ever had any authority to call ‘love’

But can never be fully washed off

I wish I could dispel my hesitations for sincerity

But I choke somewhere between dread and pride

I contemplate the behemoth of your receipt

In the voice of a dismal overthought

Then hide myself behind an ingenuity

Too tall to surmount.

Maybe love not shared is love wasted

Maybe the essence of our labour is to unarm ourselves of all besides it

Maybe the objective of our creation is the objective of our lives

But I am far too human for my own good.

I wander the earth in the pockets of those I love

Only to their absent mindedness

The potential for liberty hangs like words in the air do

But I don’t dare speak even one.

Are we not equally haunted by the love we pray in secret?

Will we ever talk about it?

If hell is to love in overabundance

Then fear is my only restraint from martyrdom

It is no surprise your eidolons have overstayed their welcome

But it is easier to pretend

Cloud my affections with falsified indifference

Wave goodbye without saying ‘I’ll miss you’

Even so

Any ink I spend on letters I won’t send

Doesn’t feel like ink wasted

So I will draft my fourteenth

Then pity myself to sleep.