Maybe I Only Love The Unattainable

A story about loving something elusive.

I only love the unattainable. And I don’t mean that in a we-want-what-we-can’t-have kind of way.  I just love the unattainable. I hope you understand that. Please do not be surprised if one day I become distant. I am trying to recollect my thoughts and realize that you are the one good thing that has happened to me so far. But I can’t love you.

I dream of touching your face and kissing you in the morning on a Sunday after we have fallen asleep with all of our clothes off. But in the afternoon I’ll drive away listening to the mix tape you gave me last December and I’ll feel more lethargic than ever. I like you but I think you need to disappear for a while. Let me breathe on my own until I can’t stand the sound of my own breath in hushed monotones; fleeting and relentlessly lonely. In the mornings I’ll take my tea slightly sweeter than usual and I’ll miss the way your fingertips felt on my spine.

Some days I might even use the record player that you got me and some days I’ll write poems in the dark of how much I miss you. Most nights I try to avoid our favorite restaurant and how much I wanted to kiss you at that party two years back. One of my friends will run into you in town and tell you that I haven’t been doing well. You’ll call me two weeks later but I won’t pick up.

I love you when you’re not looking but if I look too fast you might disappear. I love you discreetly, quietly, timidly. I love the frail part of love when frail love is all you have left. I love the unattainable and the unbearable and the ceaseless despair when despair is all you have left.

Maybe I only love the unattainable because you can’t lose what is never really yours. Maybe in a different universe where people were not latched onto each other like dead bodies tied with strings, where falling in and out of love was as simple as exchanging a silver necklace at the thrift store. Maybe then I would not love the unattainable and I would love you instead. But all I have is my heart exposed on a cable cord and your words to dismantle me in the end.

Reviews

[Bhumi Motwani]

beautiful :)
i am sure many can connect

[Ali Guerra]

thank you! i wrote it knowing many people can probably connect :)

[twain]

"I love you discretely, quietly, timidly." Powerfully use of diction in not just this poetry but all the poems of yours that I have read so far. This is fantastic, I simply must read all your poems in due time!!!

[Ali Guerra]

that means a lot to me, thank you!! :]

[Noehm Strawhair]

This has made me think a lot. Especially about possession and how fragile it is, or maybe if it doesn't even exist if we are talking about another person... We can never be sure when we are about to lose something so it's better if we do not lose it at all even if we don't have it to begin with. I honestly liked your poem a lot but now I am mad that I can't get this thoughts out of my head!

[Ali Guerra]

ah, thank you! and I'm sorry for that, ha, but yes it is very true about possession

sometimes it's easier to love the elusive