You wouldn't know it, but I think you're achingly beautiful (idea)

You wouldn't know it, but I think you're achingly beautiful.

Not that I haven't told you. I say it under the confines of my husky breath, not letting the thought coerce itself into a realized sentence. Then I try again, just sitting with you, right next to you, feeling little wisps of feathery hair brush up against my shoulder. I'm not even looking at you, but I know you are giving me that grin, that charming, little boy sort of smile that sends my mind into oblivion and my nether regions into overdrive. Certainly you will never know the effects of that smile. It was made to haunt me, to keep me awake in my most extravagant dreams.

You've even formulated little answers to give me once I try the phrase on you again. It's almost like you are distinctly uncomfortable with the way you wear your skin, your face, your lips. Sighing, I listen, knowing that you, for some reason, will always fail to see the truth of your beauty.

"I'm not beautiful... don't say things like that. " If that came out of the mouth of anyone else, it would sound manipulative, a coy plea for my obsequiety. On you, the words express your being. You do think you are ugly.

"You, too." Yet we both know that's a lie. For all of my subtle charm and flings with style, we both know that my supposed attractiveness is nothing but a goddamned lie, that no cologne I wear or clothes I comport myself to will ever give myself the languid, almost ethereal fluidity that is your body.

But the worse response of all? Silence. It cuts through my very skin to study the vacancy in your black eyes, without even a hollow reassurance to know that you just heard anything that just escaped out of my mouth. It makes me feel so opaque, like you can see right through me, sense the coagulation of love and lust that I express to you just from the tone of my voice. And that you hate me for it.

So, I've made a resolution. I won't say it to you, again. I'll supress the urge to utter it when we are sitting on the grass, windy, shades of cloud covering your face and blades of sunlight cutting through the sky, kissing the angular and studied sinews of your skin. I'll show restraint when I see you dressed up, doing justice to the soft, subtly tailored clothing like a model never could. And I won't even mutter it under my breath, knowing that somehow just saying it will violate your esteem in no uncertain way. So, I will remember it, one last time...trying to assure myself that maybe it is your shy nature that lends you such uncomparable grace.

And it's true. Because even though I say it, the words are never going to percolate from your ears and down to your soul, where it matters. And that's a damned shame, lover. A goddamned shame. But yet another reason why I love you, and the devil may care if it means I must add another sin to my laundry list of self-destructing vices.

And so ends this little confession of mine... but I must say it to you, again.. hoping that somehow you will understand my message that is a prayerful bird in flight..

You wouldn't know it, but I think you're achingly beautiful.