I looked out the window, the frigid wind biting the few cracking leaves that had the audacity to cling to their homes on frozen trees, then back to the glow of my computer screen, hand on my stomach and feeling the goose bumps rise up.

I checked my phone. No text messages, no calls, no voicemails. The bright, blank technologic silence of the empty screens all around me stared back unflinchingly, unsympathetically. The technology that kept me connected to the world constantly was now smothering my hopes and my ties to people were stretched to the point of shattering into the deep recesses of my sanity.
Winter shuttled me into the indoors, surrounded by machines blaring artificial heat to dry out my skin and mold calluses on my heart. I am isolated by the cold, no sneaking out at 2 AM, no sleeping outside with the stars illuminating our drunken aspirations and fervent faces, lips pressed against each other. The summertime brought me hope, the lingering sunshine over the green fields, the crickets’ incessant chirping proving that life kept going, organisms were still living while we humans slept and left our lives at a standstill for a few hours. Summer gave me warmth, the embrace of humid breezes wrapping themselves around my shoulders.
All anybody really wants is somebody to want them, to desire them so wholeheartedly that they are willing to throw themselves into that desire, to declare that they need the other person like they need air and water and food. Forget Maslow’s hierarchy, basic human necessities consist of love, be it through family, friendship, or romance.
“What would you say if I said I love you?”
“I would say you were wrong.”
Lust masked by romance precipitated my downfall, my logic overwhelmed by immense passion and the words a boy will say impulsively. Though I don’t think I know what love really is, I know the poetry of it, the exaggerated emotions, the syncopated heartbeats, and the carnal pleasures that don’t last pass a final sigh, kiss goodnight, then unanswered questions and expectations.
Was I happy? Yes. Was it worth the sleepless nights, watery eyes veined with red, dwindling peace, and it, that thing in my stomach that grew, making me expand like a balloon, my shallow self mourning the loss of my body, resenting having to share it with another?
No, but I am stuck with it, struggling between destroying the last vestige of disappointment or keeping it out of an insane need to nurture what had been created in my body.
I can’t even languish underneath the sun on a soft bed of grass to think, I’m trapped, banging on the bars of my prison, throwing my childhood at the walls, memories, naiveté, hating my limitations but finding myself loath to leave. I have to talk to him, I really do, and even though he knows he should be here, he refuses and I hate myself for needing him! I hate this game that he played, executing his strategy with such aplomb, luring me in then leaving me dashed when the shimmer of dusk that could blur the lines of reality disappeared.