Once more the Yellow Jacket

 

Yellow Jacket,

I could write a million things about you, and you once asked me how. But how do you explain a feeling that you don’t quite understand yourself? How do you describe something when you're not even sure if it’s love or just longing? Lately, a lot of emotions have been swirling around inside me, but I’ve lived so long in the stories of others, under the pages of novels filled with love and romance, that even after consuming them all, I still can’t quite grasp how to express what’s in my heart.

There’s this fairy tale that plays in my head, one that’s always there, and I’ve come to realize I can never stop feeling what I feel for you. Even though the light may have dimmed, the candle is still burning. I know it’s there, flickering in the shadows, refusing to go out. It’s like this fire inside me—it burns in different ways, sometimes soft and comforting, other times wild and consuming. It haunts me, this fire, and I’ve accepted that it might either burn me to ashes or somehow heal all the other burns I carry inside.

I write so much about this fire that you’d think the heat is my comfort, but in truth, I’ve lived in the cold for so long. The ice has become my home, and now I’m afraid that I can’t handle the warmth, the heat of something real. It’s like the cold has shaped me, made me fearful of the fire, and in my fear, I keep disappearing.

So I stay lukewarm, hovering somewhere in between, avoiding the flames but unable to fully embrace the cold. And I don’t know how much longer I can do that. Not when I feel this way about you.

But you, Yellow Jacket, you are the fire I fear and the warmth I long for. I just don’t know how to step into the heat without burning myself.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s worth the risk.