Flickering Light

You are but a flickering light; not a candle but a lantern that fades and brightens in the evening. It is only when you brighten that I take any notice of your enticing warmth, but when it calls I cannot bear to resist you. I know that I must be careful as I'm called to you. I know that it would bring me pain to touch you, even momentarily, but as I watch your light in the early hours of the morning I feel as though that moment of contact would be worth a lifetime of pain or an eternity of black night.

I am not so ignorant as to think that this will not effect me forever, but I cannot quite convince myself that I should turn my back and run. You're brightening, but perhaps I'm just coming closer to you in this night. No, I can't. I must think of the others, the rest of the world, the ones that would miss me after that one touch, that one intimate moment, that caress, that kiss. Perhaps my own life is not much to sacrifice, but the lives of those are plenty, more than I can contemplate in this little room.

And gosh, it is such a little room. And you're closer than you were a moment ago, but you are not the one moving, only flickering your light over me. Why aren't you fading? Why are you still looking at me like that, with that giddy smile. Or is that my giddy smile, reflected in your shimmering white teeth? It must be mine that I'm seeing, so close I could touch it. Because I'm closer to your golden face now, that forbidden orb, than I should be. I cannot pass this off as accidental, friendly closeness, a joke, some form of amusement. No, I didn't mean to move so far but I cannot go back now.

Oh, those are merely excuses. I could go back at any moment I chose but I do not want to go back. Oh, if there is any goodness on this planet let this moment disappear, let his brightness fade now so that I may regain my peace. Perhaps if he fades his flickering light again, removes temptation and sparkle and warmth, I could return to my own family, my own kind. For, he is not even my kind, not even close to being my part of my species. I am not near his level and he is not near mine. This shouldn't be happening. I should not be here. I shouldn't. But I am, and he is warmer and sweeter than anything I have in my life and it would be worth the pain of an eternity just to touch him, just to touch that golden orb, just to reach out and...

Why must falling victim of temptation carry such a heavy price. I am forever to be burdened with the guilt of that one kiss, one which he turned to tell me should never have happened in the first place. I've hurt him too. He knows that there is no going back from what we've done. He knows that it was his flickering that tempted me, his brightness that he couldn't subdue as much as he knew he should. But he brightens like that for so many of us that I was a fool to think that I was the one he wanted for the moment. He didn't want me, he merely wanted my attention, and now he has nothing.

But still, his flickering light calls to me in the night when I am my most vulnerable. What am I to do?