Hara kiri

You love someone who doesn't love you back. Not that they hate you; they just like you, enough to keep you but not the way you want to be kept. 

Not the way the moon claims the ocean's tides, not the way Jupiter claims its moons. They keep you enough to hold you at arm's length, never giving you what you thirst for; perhaps not knowing that you thirst at all. 

You love someone with the love of a child: and they, like a child, will never know how much it kills you inside to have backwards hugs returned but with a different language altogether: the language of distance. You will stay there. There, and no nearer. We will go far, but no farther than this. 

It would have been better to be hated. At least, in the eyes of hate, you are someone elevated enough to be hated. It would have been better to have been forgotten; for then you could tell a narrative to yourself that time eases all marks. No, but no: this and no nearer. Far, but no farther than this.

It is a special kind of pain to be regarded this way: for you want what you want, want what you cannot get, but settle for what you do get. You cannot leave, much less look away, from a beloved that holds so much hold over your heart like this. 

It would be better to be let go. They cannot: here, but no nearer. Far, but no farther than this.

We are all complicit in our own pain.

So what respite, what resolution? You say what they say, and leave: No, no farther than this. I love you, but no more. You are in my heart, here, but no nearer.

It will kill you to leave. But it would have decayed you to have stayed.