Listen: Love is not even the right word for what this thing is. It is a strange magic. A glow that alights on your features suddenly, a warm haze that transforms you entirely. One minute, you are just a girl. And the next...

At some point painful relevance springs up uninvited like weeds. A stabbing little squeeze around my heart that highlights objects, actions, music and more with a hollow memory of your presence. A gut wrenching absence of your smell, your voice, your glittering eyes.

This is not what I wanted.

I would invest some time and attention in you, and then you would fall in love with me. A game. Not exactly harmless, I suppose, but a game nonetheless. Because having someone love me is pleasant like a breeze. A pat on the back. A concert in my honor. And not loving them back is invigorating. Freeing. And so I spent some time, and some effort, day after day. Because I wanted that pat on the back.

But things did not turn out as I had hoped. Not even a little.

Have you read The Little Prince?

What does that mean - 'tame'? Asks the little prince.

To establish ties, responds the fox.

To me, continues the fox, you are nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you... ...And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you.

And so suddenly, alarmingly, thoughts of you invade my otherwise stable world. A hard, sinking weight slides down my middle. A sincere, sudden sadness grasps at the coattails of some innocent memory; a bitter dissatisfaction transmutes this whole colorful world into ash.

You, of course, are none the wiser. Carelessly distant. Clueless and unhurt.

Is this love? Certainly not. This is an affliction well deserved. A foolish boy's just deserts.