looking stricken

You’ve captured me completely.

I washed my face with tea this morning, poured into my hands over my bed by the boy next door.

He holds me close and tells me not to go, while I can tell the clock is ticking, siphoning seconds away, sucking then into now, a little more than near. Later I find a note in my bag, thin black ink, I Treasure You with a heart and a name scratched quickly in perfect hand writing both aching familiar and painfully arcane. I arrange it on my desk, still with the taste of his cigarette in my hair, an attempt to resist an automatic urge to tuck it into my shirt, one quick gesture over my left breast, folded safe and warm against my skin. Hours pass, half a day, then, as I write this, tick, I give in.

I wish there were a stronger way to say it.