You wouldn't know it, but I think you're achingly beautiful

Scarily, I think we both know it, but there's really nothing to do about it.

It's strange. You're probably one of my three closest friends here, definately the one that I connect with on more things than anyone else. I know how impossible a relationship between us would be - how it would very likely sour our friendship, how all of our other friends would disapprove, how is just a bad idea.

It's been a while since I realized how beautiful you are. How, when you tilt your head to read something on the screen, your face is positioned so that you look like a sculpture. How your little black geek glasses and "punk ethic" are some of the most beautiful things about you.

I always think I'm over it, that my reason has finally caught up with me. And, in a way, it has. I know that I will never do anything about this.

However, I also can't seem to completely rid myself of it. Sometimes, when I'm hanging out with everyone, I'll look at you laughing at some stupid joke, and my heart hurts.

Eternal crush, maybe ... what can I do?

You wouldn't know it, but I think you're achingly beautiful.

Not that I haven't told you. I say it under the confines of my husky breath, not letting the thought coerce itself into a realized sentence. Then I try again, just sitting with you, right next to you, feeling little wisps of feathery hair brush up against my shoulder. I'm not even looking at you, but I know you are giving me that grin, that charming, little boy sort of smile that sends my mind into oblivion and my nether regions into overdrive. Certainly you will never know the effects of that smile. It was made to haunt me, to keep me awake in my most extravagant dreams.

You've even formulated little answers to give me once I try the phrase on you again. It's almost like you are distinctly uncomfortable with the way you wear your skin, your face, your lips. Sighing, I listen, knowing that you, for some reason, will always fail to see the truth of your beauty.

"I'm not beautiful... don't say things like that. " If that came out of the mouth of anyone else, it would sound manipulative, a coy plea for my obsequiety. On you, the words express your being. You do think you are ugly.

"You, too." Yet we both know that's a lie. For all of my subtle charm and flings with style, we both know that my supposed attractiveness is nothing but a goddamned lie, that no cologne I wear or clothes I comport myself to will ever give myself the languid, almost ethereal fluidity that is your body.

But the worse response of all? Silence. It cuts through my very skin to study the vacancy in your black eyes, without even a hollow reassurance to know that you just heard anything that just escaped out of my mouth. It makes me feel so opaque, like you can see right through me, sense the coagulation of love and lust that I express to you just from the tone of my voice. And that you hate me for it.

So, I've made a resolution. I won't say it to you, again. I'll supress the urge to utter it when we are sitting on the grass, windy, shades of cloud covering your face and blades of sunlight cutting through the sky, kissing the angular and studied sinews of your skin. I'll show restraint when I see you dressed up, doing justice to the soft, subtly tailored clothing like a model never could. And I won't even mutter it under my breath, knowing that somehow just saying it will violate your esteem in no uncertain way. So, I will remember it, one last time...trying to assure myself that maybe it is your shy nature that lends you such uncomparable grace.

And it's true. Because even though I say it, the words are never going to percolate from your ears and down to your soul, where it matters. And that's a damned shame, lover. A goddamned shame. But yet another reason why I love you, and the devil may care if it means I must add another sin to my laundry list of self-destructing vices.

And so ends this little confession of mine... but I must say it to you, again.. hoping that somehow you will understand my message that is a prayerful bird in flight..

You wouldn't know it, but I think you're achingly beautiful.

The most beautiful people are those are not so in a conventional way.

They are those who, although you would never have called them plain, you would never have looked at them and thought that they were pretty.

But then time passes, you spend more time in each others company. Not because you fancy each other, not because you have a crush on each other, at least not one that either of you have admitted to yourselves. You spend time with each other simply because thats the way it happens. You sit together every night and watch the Simpsons. You lie there on each others beds, in each others rooms. Talking, just talking. Ideas come out and combine.

One day it starts to happen. Seeing each other becomes the high point of the day. You think you have a crush on someone else though.

You dance togeather. Close. When you dance you hold each other. But not as you would hold a friend. Its strange, you never dance with the one you think you have a crush on. Your cheeks are next to each other. There is a part of you that knows that, if you wanted to, you could kiss each other. But you don't. You are in the moment. Your proximity is enough.

Slowly it dawns apon you. Somehow you've started holding hands. First in private, while you are watching TV in each others rooms. For some reason everyone else who would normally watch with you have stopped coming. They seem to know that it is a time just for the two of you. One day, while sitting side-by-side on the bed, your fingers brushed past each other. And stopped. And slipped into each others hands. You hold on and don't let go. Once you start holding hands you feel like you are connected at all times.

Then it happens. You are out together, celebrating a birthday. You are both drinking, but not drunk, just happy. You are dancing. There is a whisper in your ear "you two are right for each other, get together, look after each other". You look up and over the crowd. Your wispered words are right. The world changes. You know your feelings.

You kiss and it is right.
You hold each other and it is right.
You look into each others eyes and it is right

You wish it were to be forever.

Maybe one day it will be.

This is a beauty that doesn't die.

I look at you, I desire you.

I always will.