The worst part about it is that it affects me much more than it affects you; both of you.
You have this way of ignoring me. You have this way of making me jealous.
You do it so easily.
I still can’t be in a certain radius of you without wanting to gaze into your eyes,
the deep brown eyes with the lashes that stretched and curled for as long as you’d let me stare;
and I could never stare long.
There was always a phone, or television behind which I would hide my true feelings.
At one point those eyes wanted nothing more than to see every piece of me, inside and out.
Now those eyes have been blinded— blurred to your effect on me. Someone has blocked your vision.

It’s difficult watching you now.
Watching you live. Watching you love.
The most I can do is attempt to blur my vision too, but my heart and mind are still 20/20
…so is my hind-sight.
I denied your affections. I played hard to get, and you never understood just how tightly I grasped the affection you handed me.
I once thought that your affection was mine
…to have and to hold,
But you yanked that affection from my palms with no remorse, and gently buried it, deeply into the heart of another.
You never placed it in my heart.
I never allowed you.
Now you’ve fallen in love with “a profoundly wise man”
Someone amorous, gleeful, everthing you wanted.
I envy the love you share.
I wish that I was yours to have, but I was only ever yours to hold.

J. M.