Half-life

When I said I wanted to keep you for all for myself you said "so you're embarrassed of me?"  "No,"  I tease, "just selfish."  We laugh, and kiss, and in our embrace there is something false; something that cannot be questioned but simply half-heartedly understood.  Once you ask me what's wrong, "I'm fine," I lie, trying to be convincing.  I'm not, we both know it, but things better left unspoken will remain indecisively in the air.  So then, one day perhaps you will come home and find things wrong, horribly terribly wrong.  I'll be gone, or I'll still be there but I'll have left you forever.  And then you will be flung forward into sorrow and I will be able to do nothing about it, my shell not even offering cold comfort.

There will be people- lots of people pretending to share your misery; but in the end they will leave a flower and shed a tear and then they will disappear, and you will be alone again.  Then perhaps you will have a drink, or two, or three; and by five drinks you will be pounding things with your fist and by ten drinks you will be sobbing with your head on the kitchen table.  And somehow all you'll want is the teasing, even the half-hearted glances from the later days.

You will yearn for the half-love we had, until one day you will be at a dimly lit bar and she will be there, smiling and whole.  She will give you all of herself, holding nothing back and loving completely.  But when you kiss there will be something wrong, and when she asks you, you will say "it's fine, I'm fine..."  She will not know anything more about me then the part of you that is missing.  And that is right, and so it goes, and so we continue.