Shushed behind shallow breathing, low and soft, as if hiding but refusing to disappear, I keep my desire. I feel it rise now and then, forcing itself from my clenched stomach. The intoxicating thrill, the icy fear of discovery beckons me, and clings to me like a sticky residue that lingers long past a fading nightmare.

We are incredible paradoxes of the human spirit, you and I. I might not be as gripping or severe, but I compliment you. I complete you in a way you need to achieve perfection. I am smooth and gentle. I am healing. I am rain to parched earth. Whereas you. You are a silent weapon, just as dangerous hidden as one in the open. You have a strange way of being frozen and heated by doing nothing at all. You devastate everything behind you just because you were there, and did not stay. But I can tread unscathed in your wake. Because we are necessary opposites. We are the conclusion of human heart and spirit, love and apathy.

It is a strange love, this love.

It's a faded kind of mellow.

Unlived, unclaimed.

But it exists, this love.

In the spaces between us.

And every time my sight is filled with you, I think I fall again.

And we dance a dance that doesn't know it's dancing.

I can almost believe that years exist as minutes when I am watching you. I know I am tied to those lapses of time, but I am never quite aware how strongly I am invested. I can't understand how so many feelings could be compacted within a single human body. I suppose I should be able to figure it out, if I were to compile everything from when it began. Not the very beginning. I don't even know where that beginning establishes itself. But it is true. All my significant moments exist because of you. They would be meaningless any other way.

These spaces between us.. they merge into one, vast, bottomless ocean. The waves are quiet, yet have a strength that alludes to an unseen power hidden within them. They have a depth that promises the answers to secrets, if you can only think of what questions to ask. I never feel so feeble and hopeless as when I hear them sing. I've never felt such a fevered longing as when I hear their song. Anything so measureless and beautiful, yet so utterly unfathomable, inspires. What it inspires cannot be known. It's something outside the capacity of comprehension, but it is not something that can be cast aside or ignored. It is greedy, and once it grips you, there is no escape. Without it, I would fall. Without it, I would throw myself down.

It's a strange love, this love.

And ever when you brush by me,

Like feathers our hands touch.

Yet it never means a thing.

But I every time we pass I see a look in your eye

That says you need me the way I need you.

We rehearse a love that doesn't know its love.

I must have been distracted because I didn't see you before you saw me. And though I feel the thunder of icy blood rush to freeze my gaze on yours, I have never felt so willing to submit. Your gaze is like a maze, which can only be navigated by one with practiced precision. I have walked those hallways and, though I have come to know them well, never have I been lost so long.

Your walk; so purposefully slow and casual. So dangerous and graceful. You seem so stoic for such a predator; your steps glaze over the pavement as though the pull of gravity escapes you. And as you stop right before me, you flick your tongue out lightly to lick your lips, and the weight of your eyes bear down on me. Penetrate me. Suffocate me.

It's a strange love, this love.

It has no need to feel love.

It has no need to be love.

It doesn't mean a thing, this love.

But this love loves love.

And as the corner of your lips softly lift, you nod at me with exaggerated slowness as though you could read me as I read you. As you turn to brush past me, I breathe in your scent as you breathe in mine, and our hands touch like feathers. When you are gone, I feel your ghost, and my skin pebbles. Even when you are gone, you are never really gone. I feel myself smile.

This need we need.

This love we do not love.

It's a strange love.

But every time my sight is filled with you,

I think I fall again.

And I know you fall as well.