To one who is what I once was

First and foremost, trust me, it's a doomed cause.

But such is the beauty of that feeling that its mere presence in your life is bliss, regardless of the fact that it may never be returned. A choice now lies before you: to control that flame before it can consume your being, or to let it burn free and wild as you go down in a glorious blaze. The only certainty between those two choices is pain. Whatever you choose, a part of your heart will die. The only say you have in the matter is how.

If you choose to harden your heart and ignore that tiny flame, it will die - and a without its warmth, a piece of your heart shall wither. And if you are not careful, that piece will rot and corrupt the entirety of your being. Leaving you a shell of your former self, a barren waste that will allow not even a semblance of that feeling to grow.

But there is yet hope. If you so choose, a sliver of a whisper of hope. But you shall pay for it with more pain.

You may love from afar and keep that flame alive in your heart, although it must be bound and sheltered. A flame encased in ice, that both protects the fire and constricts it. The suffering you endure will be harsh and near-endless. You will have to smile and laugh as the object of your affection finds happiness in the arms of another. You will let the one you love fall in love with someone else, and you can't ever let that person know, for then your friendship shall end. Such pain cannot be done justice by mere words. And you will have to endure it day, by day, by day.

Until one comes along and you realize that the flame has gone still in you. It has not exactly died, no. But it has become one with its prison. A lifeless fire that shall burn for eternity. Because of your sacrifice, you will always have that precious memory of a love that did not bloom but also did not die. Your heart will be free, but on a small part of it shall be a testament of the love you could not give. And as hope springs eternal, know that that flame may be rekindled yet, because you chose to withstand unbearable pain rather than kill it.

Or you may choose another path.

If you choose to let that blaze run free, it shall consume you, most certainly it will. But those few moments you have as the fires of love use your soul as kindling shall be bliss. Your heart will fly on the wings of hope. You shall look into the eyes of the one you love as you confess, and for a split second it will seem that your gambit paid off.

And then the torture begins.

Rejection first, for the love you so strongly desire is promised to another. Or because the eyes which have trapped your soul as surely as a bird in a cage sees nothing but a friend in you.

Abandonment comes next, because a rift shall form between the two of you - a distance that may be as small as a meter, and as easy to cross as a light year.

And then comes coup de grace. Loss. A final, undeniable sense of loss, because you will never be allowed close again. The knowledge that your love is unrequited and unreturned, a truth that shall be burned into you every fiber of your being.

Your only hope lay yet again with more pain.

If you can choose to reject yourself and love without expectation, or hope, then a chance may yet be found for the heart that has chosen so unfortunately. As you burn to cinders, you must step back and allow the winds of fate to carry you elsewhere. It will be excruciating and hard to even think after that fateful ordeal. But if beforehand you accept that nothing can come out of your confession, you buy for yourself a chance to stand up yet again.

In the end I am once again reduced to letting the words of another carry my message.

Pablo Neruda

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.