Kindest things

I often have to tell him to be quiet. Wherever or however we’ve come together and he starts to speak heavy-handed like he’s laying bricks. With the growing weight of it all I can hear something deep within me break. Developing cracks at my foundation, I have to stop him and say “please don’t tell me things like that.” Then we sit in silence cushioned by all the words that we are not saying—because he cannot say them. And because I cannot hear them, I force myself to let the words fall off me like water on feathers. I can’t listen to them because they are too sweet. The validity of their sweetness is tainted when I know they can never be mine. I have to file them away, unread in a folder in my head labeled “Kindest Things Ever Said to Me.” The folder was thin and worn until he came around and now it gets fuller and fuller with each passing day. He says one day he will be able to open that folder and unleash all of those beautiful hidden things but I am not sure. I know that men do not leave their wives for another woman. Men do not put her first. They can’t and I wouldn’t expect him too. But that doesn’t mean that I am content with always being second. I must accept that I will always be on the other side of the glass. I’ve found the voice that speaks so sweetly to me, that makes my chest flutter when I think of him, or my breath catch in my lungs if he’s near. And I can’t have him. And I am not first. And I know that ultimately this does not end well for me.
And yet, I can’t stop.