Hope

I listen to her sing over my phone,

light my favourite candle,

glance at her when she misses a chord.

I had put my laptop away, but she makes me want to create.

A flame warding my cold soul,

and I listen.

My fingers draft things ii can never tell her, but I feel,

a screen apart, half an hour drive away.

I clench my jaw at the reminder of her smirk,

cheeks flush from the heat of the fire.

I listen to her talk when she messes up,

comment something that makes her laugh.

It makes my face hurt.

I press the pads of my fingers to my cheek,

I feel the dimple there, my father's, the one I share between two brothers, beneath the fatty tissue given by my mother.

I clench my jaw to stop the feeling swarming like hot honey in my chest,

because she will never feel the same for me.

She'll search for what I feel in the face of men, and ill search for her in a million other women.

I hope they replicate blue eyes, and her eye roll. They won't. But I hope.