SSSSD: Day Five

Here's today's entry-- I think it's the shortest one yet. Me so smart, with my few words.

I would also like to state for the record that the guy in this story is not Ben (he's made up. I think in my head his name was Joshua, because I was thinking about The Ten Commandments.)

Here the prompt.

***
When he comes in the door after work it hurts to look at him, that's how strong my love is. That every time I see him, even now, after two years, I seize up, and then I explode, all limbs all ways, wanting so badly to touch him, to be so close to him that I simply sink inside him. I put my hand against his cheek and look into his eyes, and he smiles down into my face. "What you making for dinner?" he asks, and then spins out of my grasp to the newspaper, the easy chair, the loving caress of ESPN.

I'm thinking maybe it's over between us, but I couldn't bring myself to leave. I'll wait for him to do it. It's easier to be left than leave-- maybe not easier, but more familiar. Watching the backs of old boyfriends as they walk away, a cardboard box filled with the spoils of our relationship tucked under each of their arms. The presents I give them they keep. The cards, they leave splayed on the coffee table. It's the gift that counts, not the thought.

Even friends, old friends, they come home from college, and tell me I'm too intense, now, that maybe I call too much, that maybe I'm too jealous. The tone of their letters is as distant as the cities they now live in. Not one of them would stay for me.

I've given so many people my heart. And all I get back are kidneys and lungs-- painful to lose, but not life-threatening.