I Don't Want What I Want
I do not want what I want.
That is the trouble.
Not that the desire exists, but that it exists with such persistence, such unreasonable patience, such quiet confidence that it sits beside me through every distraction and survives every attempt to send it away.
I tell myself to be sensible.
To leave certain thoughts unopened.
To let affection remain where it is—beautiful, distant, uncomplicated.
But longing is a poor listener. It slips beneath locked doors. It lingers in ordinary moments. It turns harmless things into reminders.
A song becomes a memory.
A memory becomes a conversation.
A conversation becomes a thousand imagined futures that bloom without permission.
And suddenly, there you are again.
Not beside me.
Not touching me.
Simply existing somewhere in the world with enough force to rearrange the weather inside my chest.
I do not want what I want.
I do not want the way your name can interrupt an entire afternoon. I do not want the strange gravity of you, the invisible pull that bends my thoughts in your direction no matter how firmly I straighten them.
I do not want to wonder.
Yet I wonder.
I do not want to wait.
Yet I wait.
I do not want to look for pieces of you in every beautiful thing.
Yet somehow every beautiful thing reminds me of you.
The evening sky.
The first drop of rain.
The warmth left behind in a room after laughter has departed.
So I remain suspended between wanting and withholding.
Between reaching and remaining still.
Between the sweetness of possibility and the discipline of patience.
And there is a peculiar ache in that place.
A beautiful ache.
The ache of a hand that almost reaches.
The ache of a confession that almost escapes.
The ache of a heart standing at the edge of a magnificent surrender, watching the waters below, knowing how easily it could jump.
And so the contradiction remains.
I resist.
I linger.
I retreat.
I return.
I build walls.
I leave gates open.
I convince myself to move on, only to discover that my heart never received the instruction.
There is a part of me that wishes to forget.
And another part that prays never to.
A part that wants freedom.
And another that would gladly remain captive.
A part that fears the fall.
And another already standing in the air.
And between those two selves, I continue to live—
wanting,
hesitating,
aching,
hoping,
carrying the exquisite burden of a desire that refuses to disappear.
I do not want what I want.
Yet every day...
I find myself wanting it more.
Copyright © Muhereza Rodgers Roger | Year Posted 2026
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