Friendship sometimes grows into love. But love never just goes back to friendship. How can it? Friendship can catch fire and grow into a burning love, but when the flames subside, ash is left, or maybe sometimes coals. Whatever remains is not the same as before the flames consumed what you once knew.
We were friends. We had the soothing warmth of two friends that were so close. Then you changed. You started sparking. You tried to kiss me. I turned and buried my face in your shoulder, keeping away from that dangerous mouth of yours that had the power to burn my whole world to the ground. I kept my face buried there for long moments. We were like unmoving flint and steel, afraid to move for fear of catching fire. Then you stepped back and walked out. I was afraid I had doused everything there was between us.
But you still came back, and we were still friends. We were still so close. But now over everything loomed the possibility of being closer. The warmth of your body next to mine was not the same comforting warmth of a friend. Now there was something hotter burning just beneath your skin. And your sparks had ignited my curiosity. This new heat was strange and exciting. I was intimidated and intrigued. You tried to kiss me again. Those hot flames that leapt from your mouth to mine consumed my every thought. I let you set my world ablaze.
Then you changed my world again. You had pulled me into this strange new fiery world, and we were closer in a whole new way. Your fire went out while mine kept burning. You stopped kissing me. You stopped loving me. The flames that had coursed through your body into my own were so much weaker than they had been before. Then you walked out. You wanted to just be friends. You left me standing in a pile of ashes with my embers still burning.
With you, anything in between being friends and being lovers is torture. Yet here I am, caught in limbo, lying so close to you like we used to. I don’t feel the same comforting warmth I felt at the start, nor do I feel the burning desire that was the start of something else. There is something simmering. Something precariously balanced between going cold altogether and boiling over.