(This story contains some grown up themes. Only mature readers beyond this point. You have been warned!)

When she turned that corner for the last time, I didn't feel my own broken heart as much as I felt bad for breaking her.

It was a good run. From the handkerchief on the street to the coffee Tupelo, we had many shared memories, precious seconds I never knew I'd end up living in.

Things got more serious as the days turned to weeks turned to months. What started with a simple hug turned into nights of passion and lust. She just felt right to me. But soon just feeling wasn't enough. She wasn't satisfied by the sex. She wanted to know. She tried to make me think deeply, but every time I fell deeper into her eyes. "Are you listening?" she'd ask. I'd nod, my impassioned thoughts disconnected from my physical state. She started noticing. She tried harder to get my attention, shoving and tugging and shouting, but it never worked. Eventually she gave up trying.

It was then that I began to notice things were different between us. She became very quiet and reflective, very introverted. We hardly ever held each other's hands any more, much less slept together. I got bored. I started looking the other way. We fell out of touch, even though we were together all the time. And between her silence and my blindness, I never noticed that sad gaze in her eyes.

She fought to regain my attention. The nights of passion resumed, and she went further than I ever expected her to go. Even then it didn't feel the same as before, but it felt so good, so close, I couldn't tell the difference. But then it stopped. She stopped. On the very street corner we met on, she told me that she didn't feel like herself anymore. With tears running down her eyes, she told me how hard she had tried to make us work. Each word like a rock through my window, she told me how she had gotten so caught up in trying to know me and please me that she had lost herself. And so, she sobbed, she was leaving me. A real relationship, was what she wanted. A relationship where he knows her and she knows him, where they can find identity in each other.

I couldn't give that relationship to her. And I will never be able to give that to anyone.
I will never know myself.
And I will never know her.