"About a Girl: The Ballad of a Loser in Love"

I hate yearning. All my life, all I’ve done is yearn and yearn and yearn till my heart has

been churned and ripped out of my chest and stabbed. I have read love poems and love stories and love letters and seen that sweet, perfect, relentless love and longed for it endlessly like birds long for spring. I feel myself lost in that azure ocean of want. I see her every day and I see her so confident in her existence, like she’s meant to be and everything is meant to be hers. I envy that blissful ignorance. If only I could ignore her being. I wish I could pretend she doesn’t exist and let go of this godforsaken heartache.

I wonder what it’d be like to wake up in the morning with the sun shining and the birds chirping and not drown in the fact that I exist in the same world as her. I wish there was a bubble around me, my own tiny atmosphere so that I don’t remind myself of the fact that I breathe the same air as she does. Her existence is killing me slowly. Her absence leaves me parched like I’m a madman navigating the Sahara. I’m parched for her presence and I can’t stop, I won’t stop till I’ve drowned myself in her existence and quenched my thirst.

I think of confessions under the sweet summer air. The glint in her hazel eyes which gleam under the sunlight and dance in-between kisses with enchantment and arousal. Beach days with sand under our feet and the cold ocean breeze slapping me from the stupor as I lay in her arms and feel her fingers tug, and twist and turn my hair till it curls. She smiles with her eyes and I can see her face light up brighter than the lights under Bella Vista on a hot summer evening. That godforsaken smile has tortured me, teased me, and tantalized me. I long for her laughter, for her sweetness, and her love but also for her passion, her anger, her rage, and her jealousy. I want her to burn her mark onto my skin with her teeth till the sting of her kiss sticks with me like a reminder of who I belong to.

At night, it gets bad. During the day, you have people you can talk to and things you have to do. At night, it’s just me and my thoughts and everything comes back to her eventually. It comes back to her soft skin under my fingers, her hands running through my hair and my lips sweetly pressed against hers under the summer sky. I am deprived of her and thus I am deprived of all that’s beautiful in the world. Everything is lustreless because she’s not here and I ache for her return. I ache for her return like Penelope ached for Odysseus. Only her return will rid my dreary, dreadful world of all its dullness. Only she can bring beauty and joy and laughter back to this wretched heart of mine. Her absence is swallowing me whole.

I don’t know why I want her so bad. It’s eating me alive. I can’t help but want her with every single molecule in my body. Orpheus journeyed to Hades to bring his love back but I’d crawl through the fields of punishment for her. I’d feel the jagged rocks rip my skin open and the pain envelop my senses. My body may get bloody or battered or bruised but it’s all worth it when she stands in front of me and fills me to the brim with her grace. Her smile, her laugh, her hair, her lips, her kiss, the feeling when I’m inside her, everything is just far too much to fathom. All her attributes and features entrance me. She leaves me beguiled and traps me in love like no other, a love I cannot live without. I would take up arms against the entire world if it meant she’d hold me for a moment. I feel like the lack of her has left me in a lovesick madness like Patroclus’ passing left Achilles in a flurry of rage. He was a warrior and all I am is a blithering poet boy whose yearning is eating him whole and still I can’t help but pine for her, I can’t help but burn for her. A minute of love between us is worth a lifetime of pain. If I could, I’d drain my body of all its blood so that I could hear the sweetness of her laughter. 

I know it’s hurting me. I know she’s hurting me but I can’t help it. I can’t help feeling this way for her. I live only for her, my skin only exists for her touch, and my lips for her kiss. I am in agony. My weeping comes in streams and floods my face till I’m left a blotchy, moist mess. Although I am in torment, I am glad of it, pleased because it means she has possessed me. Not being in pain- not crying, screaming, and pounding my fists against walls until they bleed- would mean that she isn’t a part of me anymore. I like this. I like this yearning and I like my heart aching till it’s pounding right out of my chest. I need her so bad, I need her more than the very air that nourishes me. I hate yearning but I love her. What is life without yearning and what am I without her?

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