It’s a bitterness I swallow regularly. I force it down with reluctant anger, indignant. I shouldn’t care. I know I shouldn’t. I repeat the sentiment until the words lose meaning, until I pretend I’m telling the truth. Until the pain goes numb and my swollen eyes dry and my throat is a pit of nails and glass. I don’t care.

But then I see him – or, worse yet, them. I see them together, in person or in my head, and the world goes sideways. I lose my foot, gravity defeating traction, and I fall headfirst into that tunnel. It’s all I see. I smile the whole way down, trying to pretend it’s okay. That I’m better than other people. I don’t experience that emotion. But it’s more of the same lie. I do care.

Fuck that. I’m the fucking stars and the sun. I glitter in darkness. Not only is there a list of people willing to give me what he won’t, but I’ve got a laundry list of people willing to vouch for me. I love hard, fuck harder, and when it comes to the wire, I goddamn deliver. Clear as day and he can’t see what he has waiting. Who he has willing. That one saying about horses and water. I’ll drink my sorrows away. I don’t care.

I don’t know who I’m upset with more. Them, because they’ve caught his eye, or him, because I fell for that same charming nature. It’s how he was born, the way he is. Is it the fault of the flame that moths are drawn towards it? Is it the fault of the planets to bend to gravity’s will? There’s an energy they create, and I’m left out in orbit. I do care.

They say hindsight is 20/20, but I’m blind to the pattern. I know I am. Sometimes I willfully ignore it, because that feeling of attraction, that glimmer of a pretty new man, is worth it. And when we connect? When we share conversations I can’t have with anyone else? It’s a wrap. It’s a fool’s game, one I never win, that steals another piece of the heart I’m always piecing together again, but I don’t care.

I care too much.