One and a half souls pass on a dreamy earth. They might be two if I could find the other half. When did I loose control of my nightmares? When you walked in and the breath in my throat caught and I felt. Nothing in particular, I just felt. Longing maybe. Attraction mostly, but feeling all. Washing over destroying the last of my defenses. You did what angels had longed to do. Broke the walls, made me sweat. Tremble, fear. Forbidden what I cannot have and what you would not give me. Smile on. There's nothing to do but rebuild the walls, until you wash them down again. Pain, longing. Smile on. You smile, I laugh, and for a moment a connection. Nothing wrong or unusual. You return to where you've been, dangling out of my reach. Tainted fruit, but not in the bad way. Congenial. Smile laughs, pat on the back and move to the next victim. That touch is bittersweet. A touch, but there's no promise in it. Friendship. Only friendship. The first in a long time but still not enough. It's a bubble to drowning man, an ember to a freezing one. I always want more. You plague me. Forbidden. Not just by your walls, but by others not so easily breached. There is no touch beyond there. No feeling. Other barriers, woven of thorns, I could cut through but it would hurt. Move through the back allies and make the secret heard, set it free. Cage it again as I return to the sunlight. Whimper, whining, sinking into despair. Pain oh beautiful pain wash over me; drown me in your darkness. I see you once through the crowd, at a distance. I can't talk to you. Can't just approach you. Different scenes, different groups, a few threads that always tangle me when you ride on them. I think of you once and the image lingers before my eyes. The shields melt again. Is just the thought of you enough contagion to pollute my mind and draw me forth like a rat smoked from its hole? You move to touch and I cringe away, become like a thorn so you can't. You can only brush along my sides, and you see nothing wrong with that. That's what hurts. That's what kills. You know when I'm serious, you laugh on cue, and it's almost too much. It is too much, to peer over the garden walls and see you there, free, but bound in ways that don't seem to bother you, because you wouldn't think of breaking them, when I would use all my strength and will to pry them from your wrist, even if I can't break my own. Then at least secrets would carry me the possibility the hope of knowing, instead of this endless darkness where I can see you if I dream. Always there at the back of my mind, ready to spring when I least expect it. The thought of you. Imagining the wind as a touch, and wondering what it'd be like to hold you, if only for a moment. A brief instant. Part of me cries at the thought of it, knowing there is no chance, no hope. A part of me laughs, taunting biting, driving me deeper into myself, only to find that your there again. Why are you always there? Why are you never here, now? You linger for hours, like the bitter taste of death, or the sweet smell of oblivion. Who do you remind me of? Why do echo in that hole where my soul used to fill? I see you moving through crowds, be they on the street or in my mind. Someone asked you to sing. You wouldn't. I held a sigh and looked away, knowing lingering would hurt more later if I stayed. And even as made my excuse and moved away, your voice, that instant, stuck with me, and it was like time moved on without me as I savored that sweetness for just a moment longer. It killed me. Drawing tears, like a thorn that knows he'll never touch the rose.