Strangers

It started with a friendship, though I knew you before that. We shared a couple classes and the best crew to be had. We were partners in crime the first time sophomore year, the fact I could depend on you made my worries disappear, always there, if I needed a hand or an ear, and you were safe to tease you would laugh without care. I never saw you as obtainable so I ruled myself out as an option watching girl after girl leave a scar with their actions. I wished to take away your pain, but I knew, there was nothing that I could do. The first time you said you loved me, I was fast asleep, I thought I'd imagined it in my hazy deep. But even then, I wished it was true, a secret hidden beneath my own view. Sadness confused me when you found someone new, with my same name even, that hurt a bit too. I found myself foolish to hope you'd be mine, so I moved on trying to quiet my mind. I succeeded too well and found some relief, but when you told me you'd fallen, I couldn't believe. Feelings resurfaced, I was so overwhelmed. Timing was terrible, I denied what I felt. You told me you tried to steal my heart, not realizing you already owned a part. Questions and statements trapped by clenched teeth, words and feelings I'm too scared to unleash. I love you, you said, so many times, and each and every one of them I asked you why? Because I couldn't just accept it, I'd done that before, and you were giving me mixed signals galore. I've seen the hatred for me enter other eyes, and I can't do that to you, could I even try? I tried to be everything but the promise you couldn't keep, being a new notch in your belt would only make me weep. So I warned myself not to get too attached, to take your sweet nothings like a grain of sand. You painted a dream, of you and me, against the world, one heck of a team. And it finally seemed possible, we set out to achieve, but slowly I sensed the illusion you'd weaved. It wasn't on purpose, or what you intended, but plans changed and that dream evaporated. I could feel you slipping away. I didn't know what to do, but I wanted you to stay. I didn't want to be selfish, but maybe I should've been, so the loss I prematurely felt wouldn't have happened. I almost expected... but I didn't, when you left. I love you, you said, and I bristled with lament but you said you should still say it if that's what you meant. Confusion seized me I felt like a traitor, a crumpled piece of paper. Haunted and aching in familiar pain, for all my worrying I suffer in vain. I watched you steadily fade from view. I live with the fact that's my fault too. But I can still give you a little of the blame, you never told me you'd replaced my name. And still, you continue to give me hope, binding me to you without any rope. You defined the relationship clear and fast, but just friends don't look at each other like that. So when people ask me if I know you, I respond with I used to. Because you asked me why I couldn't love a stranger, and I said... I do.