She is not you.

She has your exquisite mouth, your gorgeous brown eyes, your delicious skin. She has your body, so perfect that I swear heaven had found me when I undressed her. She has your legs, sculpted, toned, elegant. She even has your sweet breasts, with nipples like rosebuds. She turns heads everywhere, just the same as you.

She smiles as you do, bewitching, enchanting, captivating.

And like you she is the only woman in any room, any place she is in. She is the brightest, most delicate, most beautiful thing. She is adorable, funny, charming. She makes me want to protect her against the world, to see that she never comes to harm.

She fell into my arms so unexpectedly and she gave herself so completely. The way you have so many times before. In my head.

But she is not you.

I believed she was. As crazy as that might seem I thought you had become flesh after all these years. I imagined you had somehow emerged from deep in my soul and become her. That you were no longer content to just be glimpsed at airports, on catwalks, or on cinema screens. That it was no longer enough for you to flit elusively through parties, appear unexpectedly in photographs, or hover at the periphery of my vision.

That your glorious, wondrous, submissive perfection, that rare, unique, heartbreaking beauty that has haunted me all my life, filled my dreams, fueled my fantasies, taunted me, tricked me, teased me, and has made such a fool of me since the beginning of time, had ceased to be a phantom. Was no longer an ideal, a paradigm, an impossible dream. That you, in this early evening of my life, would at last be my lover. Corporeal, tangible, mortal, human.

I confused her with you. I tied myself in knots. I burdened her with expectation. I frightened her with desire. I soaked her with an ocean of words. I expected too much. I made something of nothing. I tried to treat her like you.

She was never going to be mine. I have always understood that.

But somehow I destroyed our friendship. Threw away our closeness. Broke our connection. I lost a friend.

I will never forgive you for that

I hate you.