It was the wanting. That goddamn aching, awful, feels-like-a-sore-throat wanting that consumed everything like the sun will eventually consume us. But you were so beautiful, so goddamn beautiful with your hungry eyes and greedy fingers, wishing for the world when no one, not even me, could give it to you. But I tried, didn’t I? I tried to braid a rope long enough to wrap around the Earth, tried my hardest to get it done in time, no matter if my fingers were numb from all the braiding, all that rope that never got tied. But you changed your mind, decided that no, you didn’t want me to try to give you the world, because I couldn’t even braid all that well to begin with. Again, I should have known better. You, you, it was you and those glorious five goddamn seconds that you looked at me, really saw me, really thought I was something special, beautiful even maybe, the want on your own face, sealing me up like an envelope, stamp not required. It was everything, I said that to you, I did, but you didn’t really get it, I knew you didn’t—every time I spoke you got that faraway look in your eyes, the “okay, but what about me?” look, but yes, it was everything, the wanting, you, the brevity of the affair, where a slice of my hip and a corner of my elbow were enough to seduce you. Still, my fingers curl for the shape of you, the nape of your neck, the ghostlines of your body sighing against mine, the suppleness of it, us, the unrelenting hunger in my belly from your absence. Then the goodbye of it, the lazy wave across the street, not stopping to ask if we could be friends, if we could salvage that, at least, from this goddamn awful trainwreck of a situation. You thought I would be okay, out in the daylight, with children running and falling down and scraping their knees and crying crying crying for mama and her antiseptic spray and band aids. You thought all it would take would be a few stitches and some Advil, a good night’s rest. You thought that the sun would save me in the morning, that she would blaze through your betrayal, scorch the whole thing up into scar tissue, a memory. But that was your first mistake. You thought I could be saved, that I goddamn wanted to be.