Sinking Down

i did not love you

I did not love you. Not yet, not now, we were too young, too new, for the fine stain of love to mark us together. The words "you" and "I" were singular and you and I lived our own separate singular lives. There wasn't a "we" in reflection to us but an acknowledgment was there and so we lived like that for a short while, never quite together but distances far too close to ever really be apart.

Our relationship was infatuation, selfish, and rewarding. The touches that we shared were not out of love but lust, and a yearning hunger to get what both of us desired. Fingers would trail down and along with them came instincts as they traced valleys, teeth marking, leaving reminders, whispers for hours later, and lips.. Lips seared and scorched and burned, lighting both of us on fire and then you and I's sole purpose became to extinguish the flames. You and I were young and so it was rushed, and clumsy, and amateur, with teeth clicking, stifled laughter, and a dozen whispered questions fluttering in the air. What to do? How far a hand could wander before coming back to rest against a cheek. It was an adventure, an exploration, and so you and I took it. Mapping out our way with fingertips and reading freckles and scars as if they were stars in the sky but, I did not love you.

I was a cynic in hopeless need of romance and I took it through you in heavy doses, hooked on the "what ifs" you could make realities as if I would experience withdrawals. I was Alice and I had stumbled into your everlasting and intoxicating wonderland.

It was a time of compulsion and hormones and the thought of you sent dopamine coursing through me.

It wasn't love, it wasn't. You were not my kryptonite. I could see every tiny imperfection of yours, and I could see you and I's end before we had even began.

And, even though it wasn't love it was a time of throwing caution to the wind, opening up the sails, and happily drifting off toward wherever being with you took me. Because even though the ending was so definite, so concrete, the unyielding potential, and endless possibilities that led to it would be payment enough for the pain that I'd gladly endure.

But whatever this was, this overwhelming sense I felt, it was not love. No I-I simply couldn't, I would never, I had no desire to, I did not love you.