I can’t tell lies anymore. I can’t pretend that I hate you.

But then, it never was pretense. I really did loathe you. The reasons get harder to explain as the years pass…but so do the other reasons…if they can be called such, without the support of any semblance of logic…

The reasons why I still—(as I say to you, under my breath whenever you are near, as I bemoan in all my futile attempts at poetry, as I sob into my pillow every night I cannot sleep for fear I’ll dream of you)—love you.

If I understood myself, maybe it would be easier to explain to you. But I really cannot make any sense of it, so I say nothing, only stare intently at the passing landscape I’ve seen a million times.

How many more times? This moment in history will not repeat itself. We could, one or both of us, be dead in the next half-second, week…even if we had a hundred years…would that really justify wasting this moment?

The air is thick with unasked questions that neither of us really wants answered. Gone is the peace that usually, benevolently smiles upon our silences—in its place is an awkward, oppressive fear that immediately represses any attempts to continue normally…deliberately oblivious to the obvious…

I will not be the first to step across this line in the sand. Instead, I tilt my head just slightly enough to that I can look at you while still pretending to watch the surroundings passing by at fifty-five miles an hour.

It struck me, the last time we met, that you have not much changed in these few years I have known you. I wonder if this constancy is desirable. In every way but one, I would not ever have you changed. But that one…gnaws at me as I glance at you, feeling an unsettling physical hunger. I love the way you look in the moonlight. It suits you, despite our old thing about you favoring the moon and I, the sun. I think it suits both of us, everything…this hollow, yet overflowing, strange, stagnant moment as we continue on this drive to nowhere.

What’s no longer between us…only the same thing that ruined every moment before this one. How is it that the realization of at least one of our my dreams has had the exact opposite of the intended effect? If I’m that bad at predicting the future, given certain events…then perhaps I should reconsider.

Yes. No. Why should something so seemingly seamless, preordained for our happiness, require all the strategy of a chess game? Or is it…does it…? I don’t know. I’m tired, this feels awkward, and so I look back out the window, dreaming of you, close enough to touch…

Nothing more, nothing less…what is it that leaves me longing? I cannot say in one word, I cannot say in a million. I can only hope you understand well enough without me—as you do with everything else…

Tovarich, we are not nearly perfect but we do understand one another. Why, then this silence…this silent torture? You can tell me anything, anything.

But then, can’t I do the same for you? My lips will not…can not…move before yours.

Another burden, another trouble. Is there any reason why you still keep me around…possibly the same, the only reason I’ve clung to you, to some hope despite everything that should have convinced me to do otherwise.

The verdict…both guilty. Of what? Choosing to be miserable when we have opportunities for so much more, within our reach? I am not being shamelessly self-promoting, there is so much more that we may grasp; outside of this, outside of you, me, and she—but haven’t. Everything beautiful, everything perfect—the words of idealists, cheapened by those who’ve never really understood them—true freedom, love, happiness…I know I may still reach these things on my own, but what I really, truly want from this life is share all of that with you.

I look back at you, deeply saddened, but smiling in spite of all, for it’s you—here—and perhaps that fact alone means there is some sort of small hope I may hold. Your thoughts forever mirror mine in all other things; why not these?