You mustn’t love me, I tell you.

It’s a horrible idea. You’ll end up lost and angry, and unhappy. I hate doing that to people; you know that, don’t you? If you do, pretend you don’t. Pretend I’ve the worst morality, if you can. Fill in the blanks with the worst assumptions and learn to criticise me as harsh as you need to. Paint me in dark, muddy colours as much as you have to, to prevent yourself from falling in love with the original image. 

I’m something putrid and dyed a smoky grey, a dull blot on a yellowish canvas.

I’d like you to ignore the colour of the outline and the precise, rhymed strokes that stretch the pain so neatly; you aren’t meant to see those. Take, slow, measured breathes and concentrate on that horrid colour and on that messy over-all constitution and maybe, just maybe, you’ll understand me. Just because there is a subtle beauty to a splash of grey, it doesn’t make it a work of art.     

Don’t be fooled by my honest smiles and my excessive sense of duty and loyalty: my legs are much too big, my eyes remind me of the troubled waters of an eerie marsh and my nose is slightly crooked to the left, and that’s only the outside. Inside, I am full of pride and ambitions. I am judging and ill-humoured and a paranoiac.

I am cruel, shallow and insufficient.  

I’m not beautiful, no matter how hard you try to convince me. Every time you say otherwise I fall in despair.

I despair because, if you think such a bland lie, it means that I tricked you. Somehow, I did something to fog your vision, to make you crave something from me that is beyond my capacity to give.

Love, they call it.

The kind of love you want scares me so much is leaves me feeling like nothing more than a gasping fool, so small and useless. It is a fear that stripes me to my baser, most primitive form.  

How have I given the impression that I am capable of this ….sentiment?

I add misleading and foolish to my list of traits.

I fooled myself into believing that my actions only ever affected myself; that it was safe to let go of all this stifling restrain, of my insecurities and my bashfulness. I was foolish not to think that you would see this light side of me and that it would influence you.

I smiled and you smiled back. I laughed, healthily, uninhibitedly, and you stared. I forgot to feel ashamed, and you liked it. 

You’re just as foolish as me, if not more so.

You let me deceive you into seeing me like a normal, happy, giving human being. You should know by now that I am selfish, but it seems like you don’t.

It irks me, because I am impulsive and easy to offend, too. I have moments when even my cowardliness leaves me, my anger takes over stealthily, and I want to snap.

Stop! I demand that you cease this madness. You shouldn’t act like you love me.

You can’t do such a thing. You’re destroying my sanity. You can’t close your eyes to so many restrictions.

Stop looking at me so openly, so warmly. Stop trying to prompt my eyes to meet yours when we speak. It won’t do you good if you see more inside me than what really resides there. I keep my eyes and smiles for myself for a reason.

I know how faulty I am, why won’t you?

If you break me, you’ll make me acknowledge the heat in my cheeks and the knots in my stomach, and I’ll be lost. I’ll seek you out to fix this; I’ll turn you into my lighthouse by the sea. I’ll rely on you to guide me to safety. I’ll pull, tag, draw myself closer and reach out for you.

I’ll snatch you.

You won’t like it.

I’m a nuisance; I am prudish and self-conscious and inexperienced and all those things that spell unattractive.

I’m hard work; and I may not even be worth the effort, in the end.

Won’t you regret then that you liked my thin lips and my dark hair? Won’t you wish you never held my hand? Won’t you curse yourself for never listening when, frantically, I made an effort to caution you?

You will.

And this is why you need to ignore my staring and my selfish needs and look out for yours. My red cheeks, my rapidly pounding heart, my slips of tongue; all those moment of weakness on my part are not important. Look past them.

Loving me is a terrible idea.

Because I- weak, cowardice, selfish- can only do so much to stop the damage, you must heed this warning.

You must.

I’m already too far gone to be of any more help.  

2: You are blind.

You are blind.

You are blind to everything about you. All you know are your imperfections, your mistakes and inadequacies. Your biggest criticiser and your worst enemy is no one but yourself, and you encourage such behaviour. You are a coward, in every sense of the word, but that is your only real flaw.

You stare at me with trembling lips and big, dark eyes and ask me to forget you, to spite you, to hate you. You must not know the impossibility of your request.

I can see the effort it takes for you to beg me not to love you, because, you say, it is dangerous and useless, and I’m only mislead… I read you better than you think. Your awkward movements and your shaky fingers are real and telling, and so is the fear in your gaze.

You never liked having nice things. Happiness is something you deny yourself by choice. Some part of you, the one that obsesses over perfection, tell you that you do not deserve it.

You have the nerve to call yourself selfish, of all things.

It is not selfishness, cowardice or weakness what drives you to stop me from loving you, and I wish you knew it. I wish you saw it. You are caring, selfless and strong, damn it!

You think you are cruel because you could not prevent me from loving you, you think yourself horrible because you know you’ll run and fight, and ultimately hurt me. My dear, you need to stop taking responsibility for things that are out of your control. “Someone has to do it, and if no one does, than I will.”, is that not what you once said? You always try to make things right, but not even you can make up for everyone slacking up. Not even you can stand having the weight of the world on your shoulders. Are you all too aware of that? Is that why you call yourself weak?

The only thing that is cruel about you is how utterly oblivious you are to your beauty.

The only person you ever treat cruelly is yourself.  

For this, just once, I will agree with you: You are a fool.

You are a beautiful, lovable fool, too considerate for your own good. You care so much about not hurting others, that you willingly destroy yourself.

I am also a fool, but I am a feeble, selfish fool. I refuse to let you go. No matter how much it hurts you, I cannot stop loving you.

I won’t stop.

You think only about what I ought to do, what is best for me, what is easier; that is your mistake. Never forget that I lack your strength, the strength to do what is best from everyone. I’m not a fan of sacrifices; I rarely do what I should. You forget that I have a mind and heart of my own, that I choose whom to give them to. You never deceived me, you never forced me into anything, and you were never anything but honest.

I never had any illusions about who you were. Despise your fears; you are incapable of being anyone but yourself.

You are flawed, like everyone else, but you are breathtakingly perfect like this.

You cry in outrage, in horror, but it is your fear of disappointing me –hurting me- that causes you to react so violently. You beg to be let alone, miserable and undervalued, but your face radiates happiness whenever someone appreciates your work. They appreciate you, but to you it doesn’t feel right to think of it this way, does it? It’s still exhilarating. You try to forget your pride and your obduracy, because you think them shameful, pathetic, but they are still there, inside you. You hate it, because you cannot hate it. You have it easy…

I cannot hate anything about you.

I tell you things that I think you deserve to hear, and fight the urge to hold you close, but only for your sake. Your cheeks heat up and you hide your face, and you are beautiful. You are lovelier than you want to think, you are more entrancing than you’ll ever know.

I try to tell you, to show you, to reason with you, but you are lost to modesty and fear. You decline to open your eyes or trust mine. Instead, you cling to the hope that I’ll listen.

You fight to convince me, struggling with grit, but it is useless. How could you undermine my motivation when I see in your eyes that this is a battle that you want to lose?

How could I know? It’s not that hard, you are easy to read, brutally honest even in expressions.        

“You must!” You spoke with cold conviction.

Again, you are foolish, but not less dear to me. Have I not told you thousand times before?

For as long as you refuse to see, I shall refuse to listen.

You need to love yourself, but you will not. For as long as it’ll remain like this, I shall do it for you. Maybe you’ll hate me in the end, but never will I regret it.

My decision is both selfish and selfless. I tell myself that I’m doing it for you, but I am lying to us both. I love you because it is natural for me, because I cannot help it, because I want to, because you are meant to be loved.

I do not want perfection, dark, precise lines and vivid colours. I need much less than that, I want much more for myself.

I want you; thin lips, dark hair, bright eyes, crooked nose and smooth skin; I want you, the selfless, overly-compassionate, considerate, beautiful, flustered fool. I want all of you. You do not see that either.

You are blind.