Questions I’ll Never Ask You

I stare straight through you, wishing I had the gift of telepathy.

Are you going to leave me like he did?

Why are you here?

How long are you staying?

What do you see in me?

Is there someone else on your mind? Someone who lit up your world and then burned it to the ground?

Are you as blindsided by all of this as I am?

What is this? Is this dating? Is it hooking up? Is it a path to a relationship? I’m not sure if I know how to do that anymore.

Are you going to mean? Are you going to lie to me?

Am I safe with you?

I want to apologize for my nervous chatter, but instead, I find myself building a persona. I dress differently and I carry myself as if I were some other girl, because it’s too risky to be me. It’s too risky to be real and open and to let you rip my heart out.

Are you the same as me? Do you date more than I do? When was your last relationship? How do you usually do this? I want to tell you everything about my past relationships: how I held onto empty promises for 3 years, how I haven’t been on a real honest-to-goodness date since I was a teenager, how I haven’t kissed anyone for half a year, how I sometimes feel cheated by my body because it portrays a completely false pretense and I am constantly misinterpreted. But instead, I say nothing, feigning the one type of strength that I fail to possess.

But at the end of the night, after you’ve spent hours staring at me, all I want to know is what you see when you look into my eyes. Please, please tell me who I am, because I’m nowhere near to knowing than I was before I went to France and threw away everything that I thought I was.