Devil on My Shoulder

Why does love have to be so important? 

Why do we have to fool with the matter? 

Because love, like most great gifts, 

is both my blessing and my curse, 

bringing on the happiest and the hardest moments 

of my short, young life. 

But once again I find myself 

in a place where I have 

everything that I could want 

and I could be no happier 

until I see you, 

when my heart leaps 

and my blood pounds 

and I ache to touch you 

if even in the most incidental way. 

And thus, the great cruelty 

of civilized society, 

that I cannot simply tell you 

that the first moment I saw you 

I wanted to be yours. 

I have to feign indifference, casual friendship, 

and emit only the subtlest hints 

that my deepest wish 

is for it to be so much more. 

Oh, maybe it is not society 

that makes me do such things, 

maybe it is instead the still-jagged memories 

of the crushing end of my first love- 

that vicious beast that arrives disguised 

as promise and hope. 

But regardless of the reasoning, 

I arrive every morning 

hoping to catch a glimpse of you, 

wishing for a chance encounter 

so that I can drink you in 

while trying to keep my heart beat 

from pounding so loudly 

that it drowns out my careful words 

and measured laughter. 

And somewhere under all these crazy layers 

of protection and deception 

is the tiny, glimmering hope 

that you do these things too. 

But even as I plan my moves and words each day, 

the devil on my shoulder whispers 

that I am being too careful and calculated 

and one day I will be alone and wondering 

why all my tiny silent hints 

amounted to miming in a world 

where you have to scream to earn a second’s notice.