I hate that I loved you.

Even now, I’ll wake in the middle of the night, sheets tangled around restless limbs, moonlight cutting a sharp swath across my bed.

Disoriented, the world still yet a haze, the only sense left is the fading sensation of your lips on mine.

You were half fantasy. Half concocted tales and illusions, and I was hungry for romance, hungry for love, hungry for the words and feelings I had spent years reading in books, imagining those tales transforming unto my own story, I feasted on your existence.

I gorged myself on every touch, every caress, every glance that made me want to quote Fitzgerald, to whisper Keats under my breath, to murmur Rilke into your mouth as you kissed me in a way that unchained fire from my soul.

I wanted to live in that midsummer dream for an eternity. I wanted to make you smile until my own smile was a skeletal grimace.

“Yes, finally!” exulted my heart.

My mind slumbered, lulled into submission by the sweeping joy that my heart effused.

Afterwards was a darkness I had only read about. I could feel you slipping through my fingers and I could see the the face of God becoming dimmer and dimmer until I was unsure if I had ever seen him at all.

And now, I have emerged on the other side, finally able to breathe without exhaling your name. Without feeling your voice thrumming in my spine.

I am finally my own again, and I hate that I loved you.