Tempting

Sometimes the back of my mind nips at my thinking,
Even when I’m in a state of relative serenity,
And even though I know I shouldn’t and shouldn’t have and couldn’t,
Can’t help but wondering what it’d had been like.

The desire to know your solitude is still there
And so is the questioning about me hidden away all the way inside;
Eavesdroppers never hear good for themselves, after all,
But like that’s going to quell my drive for hazardous things.

Sometimes I don’t want to know what you’re feeling,
Too afraid that it might actually be true,
Or I might actually be right,
Or we could both be so spectacularly wide of the mark.

Let me figure out a way of unraveling what we insist to call “ours”,
And, in the meantime, you can try to pretend you understand me;
We’ll both be the adventurous onlookers of a hopeless quest
‘Bout everything that can be never resolved and finished.

I see you’re trying to play this appealing game of ours
Of coming up close but never follow through the touching;
Good luck on trying to be close enough to the fire
That the flames lick your fingers but never burn your skin.

We always end up ablaze anyway
But oh, don’t pull me in, don’t you tempt me with dark twists,
Because we’ve mastered the art of getting caught up
In an exhilarating web of blind turns and raw hearts.

But we love to perform this wicked dance,
It’s too alluring for us not to fall back into old patterns
Of wronging and taking and feeling in heaven,
Of taking turns to tear each other apart.

You can see the appeal in being lazy idealists,
Playing it off as if the sham will change its detrimental array;
It would be much too easy to let ourselves be pulled back in,
Back into the chaos that enamours us with every breath.