I stare with beauty-blind eyes into your clear blue, kind, needing, loving ones and my heart breaks… again.

You hold the small of my back in a tender grip, telling me how much you love me, when thirty-three seconds ago, I was contemplating how to tell you the feeling ain’t mutual.

You describe to me as we catch each others eye day dreaming, how you’ve always loved my bushy golden hair. Thirty-three seconds ago, I was trying to reconcile the brown afro of my fantasy with the bleach blond rubbing slow circles on my hand.

My heart breaks because I loved you once. There was something inside of you that no one else saw. Maybe there was – perhaps there wasn’t – but I’ve been searching lately. I can’t find it.

My heart breaks because you love me, because you’re close enough to feel it, and I’m not.

Because, as I spot your tall figure moving swiftly through the crowd, I know in thirty-three seconds, you’ll feel just as lost as I do.

I breathe in and out.

Thirty-two seconds.