Seven Cuts

I love you without knowing why, not knowing how others love; all I know is that I live because I love you. I’m alive because I know every morning brings me closer to you and in the hope that you will someday understand the depth of my silent obsession, my need to fulfill your every need permeates my heart. When I touch you I want to never stop and when I get a glance of your face I never want to stop looking. But watching you from the sidelines isn’t enough anymore. I need more. My love needs more. My body is craving for your touch. The same touch that you bestow on others so generously, I have to yearn for, because that’s love—hunger and starvation and isolation.
Even so, if I can’t ever get you to look at me, I feel as though I can live on your fleeting gestures and your bright, expectant smiles. You love the world, I see that. You love everything about it; you get off on everything life has to offer. And then there’s me, desperate, broken, alone and confused, and hopelessly, nay, madly in love with your very existence.
And though I know that this is a suicide note, that you will be the death of me someday, I go on writing it. Because it’s the only way I know how to live. The only thing I know how to do. And I can take it when the whole world looks at me like I’m a freak. I can take it when they call me names and when they despise my very existence. What I can’t take, is when I show my heart to you and you don’t give me an answer or give me an answer that is a lie. What I can’t take is when you make promises you don’t keep. What I can’t take is waiting endlessly for you at the bridge, where you always see me, and knowing that you do it because you don’t want to be seen with me.
But here’s the funny thing about love—the minute I feel your presence, the minute I see your face, I forgive you. Even when you don’t see the cuts I’ve made in your absence, I forgive you.
“Andy,” You say.
“Yeah?”
“I want to be with you.”
“Be with me?”
“Do you have a place we can go?”
“Right now?”
“Not right now,” You say. “But soon.”
“Okay,” I say, defeated but nevertheless still oddly hopeful. “And sure we can go to my place.”
“Won’t your brother mind?”
“He won’t know.”
I glance at the cut that bleeds the most and pull my sleeve over it so you don’t see it.
“Heather,” I say. “Do you even like me?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know,” I stammer. “It’s just…sometimes…I feel like you’re…” I can tell from the way you’re gazing at passerbys that you’re not even interested in what I’m saying. “Never mind.”
You glance at the ocean underneath the bridge. “Andy. You’re a freak. You know that, right?”

Notes