Am I losing my mind? Looking at him I see you...and seeing you brings such pain undesirable...Miserable, torturing; it hurts. Though wounded I watch him, talk to him, marvel at your similarities and differences, and will I tell either of you what I'm thinking? No. Never. I don't even talk to you anymore.

I still think about you though, you know. I imagine if I went back and could do it over again what I would say, how I would act. I would be quite different. None of that stupid, girlish fawning. That's not who I am and you knew it. You knew it and yet you let me melt into you. Those strong, gorgeous arms of yours encircled me every chance they got, whether we were simply walking or actually stopped to embrace. It was all a game to you, but oh no. Not to me.

You were truly the first. I denied it for a solid year, but as time went by I could hardly keep my mind from relaxing into a misted state of insanity. Vulnerably as a doe extended my neck into that world...the one in books, the one I had heard about from all my friends and so many of my peers. You...You with your sparking cyan-jade eyes, sparking and clear, you went for the jugular.

And you tore me apart. How did my blood taste, I wonder, to one so experienced in the hunt as you? I like to pretend it was like liquid sunlight--so warm and golden your taste buds burst and your brain malfunctioned. Of course, I know that is hardly true. It was bright red, ebbing, and hot, and like the professional you are, you lapped it slowly and caused the most pain. You were a slick blade to me and you allowed me to tool you and cut myself leisurely.

Do I hate you? What a funny question. No. No, I suppose I don't. I would like to see you again, actually, in your element. With your friends. Now that I know that resisting girlish obsession is what makes me who I am...now that I have accepted myself and overall care nothing for what you think of me or how you feel for me...Now I would like to re-meet you. Start over. From scratch, I might add.

You know something else that's funny? When I confronted you with my indignity--of being used, misled, abused, and pained--you never denied anything. You never protested and you never got angry or defiant. You grew quiet, actually, and asked only what you could do to make it up to me. You never apologized.

If you had, would I have forgiven you? Would I have given you that second chance? Or by that time, would it have been a third? Without all this time to analyze my thoughts and mentally correct my faults...would I have stayed so naïve...?

I...I don't...know...