Three Little Words

When emotions are not reciprocated, what can be said?

I fumble with the words I want to say and I can see you struggling to understand them. Give me a pen and paper and I will dazzle you with words, but when it is just me having to spill my guts to you, I am going to falter.

I’m trying my best to be accurate. There is so much I want to say and I fear I don’t have enough breath in me to say it. So I pick and choose my words wisely and honestly as I try to muster up the courage to say exactly how I feel.

There is little a man can do from that point forward. Suddenly a torrent of words come out. They seem horribly impotent and not even close to the emotions they are trying to describe. Truly, all I want to do is say three magical words that will change everything for one of us, and little for the other. I know you are not there with me, so the three little words that would easily describe the way I feel are replaced by a million that aren’t even close.

There is little more unnerving that when a man can feel his heart beating within his chest yet can see it sitting across the table in front of him. There is little more bewildering than when a man can feel his truth standing beside him while knowing it is thousands of miles away. Those three little words become a bridge that takes him to eternity. Yet eternity is not ready to receive him.

I admit I’m going to ineptly tell you the story of my heart. I’ve turned a short story into an epic tale, but only because I know those three words will change the world. I know your fears, your stories, your hard times and I know how the reality of those words can shake the senses. I stutter and stammer and trip and fall all over my thoughts, and the look on your face says it all.

“What the fuck are you trying to say?”

I know what I want to say, but I know you are not ready to hear it. Yet I can’t lie to you even if I’m in a different part of the universe. I have to tell you all that is in me except, of course, those three little words.

So I throw around a million pecks on the cheek when only one kiss would do. I point to every star in the sky when all I want to do is show you the Sun. I want to discard the library and read one book to you under the Northern Lights, stoking the fire that lights the pages until you can read it too.

And pray the words make sense to you. In this book, though the pages are many and the binding thick, there are only three little words.

Just three. The three that mean everything. The three I will not read aloud.

As all stories of the wild go, there is no wolf forced to be a part of the pack. Not a one is chained to the brethren. Not one is born to such compulsion. Partnership is voluntary, even if it means the nights are lonely ones. So I will leave a million footprints in the snow hoping one day I can stop walking this path ahead of you and, instead, walk it beside you.

A sigh. A deep an guttural sigh, for I know that although it seems far from prefect, it is as it must be. I can hear your heartbeat in the distance, find your scent in musky air, and know that even if things aren’t as I want them to be, there is something that exists. Something beautiful.