Still there

  It can not be helped. You can still trace its outlines, feel its edges. The tiny prick of jealousy, like a small, almost imperceptible wooden splinter, pricking through soft tissue. It comes along with questions; what girl is he taking out tonight, who did he fuck? It comes along with solid certainty, even after the realization he's opened up his mouth and blabbed about you, perhaps even unknowingly recommending you, never understanding how he's put you into the radar. Or perhaps he has.

  It's a rotten thought but knowledge often desecrates the tender moments. It bathes them in a cold, ghastly light, bares them naked and finds them wanting. Crumbling. Common. And if your memories and treasured moments are common and cheap and faked, what does that make you? People are supposed to be the sum of their memories and actions. The first is false, the second impulsive, sometimes vile, usually misguided. 

  It makes you feel an emptier version of yourself. 

  And you accept it.

  You accept the jealousy you have no reason to feel, rationalize it, dissect it. It's not what you know that haunts you. It's all the possibilities of what you don't. We're all junkies is deep down, we have that one thing we can't resist, that we'll do anything to get a dosage of.
  For me that's tenderness. The resemblance of intimacy.