You caught me off guard.With your dark brown eyes and your stupid laugh.It’s funny, isn’t it, how we seem to find happiness in the strangest of places.

I was just trying to be, to exist, to find myself again.Reeling from a breakup I was selfish, focused, determined.

and then you wanted to be that man I needed, that fix to my broken heart.But you can’t be those things.And I’m sorry.

I am a wounded woman.Not destroyed, still strong.But a woman whose heart is entangled with a man from her past, who still thinks about him on quiet mornings, who still replays those memories like a faded filmstrip.

I don’t want him.But I still love him.And will love him for a while.

I’m sorry I cannot love you.This isn’t a choice I made, but an unconscious feeling.I cannot love you because my heart is still caught in the mess of someone else.I cannot love you because I am too selfish.

I just can’t love you right now, can’t love at all right now.

I need some time to breathe.To remember what it’s like to sit alone on the backyard patio and drink in the sun.To sleep across the entirety of my bed, sprawled and free.

I need time to know what it is I really want.Because right now I know I may get lonely, but I don’t mind being alone.