and if I had said - I love you?

And if I had said  - that I love you...

How would you have responded... pretty much the same way I would suspect...

I did not mean to cause you embarrassment or make you uncomfortable... usually I express my feelings by writing them out and leaving them behind in lonely hotel rooms or cafes for house maids and waiters to discard along with dirty dishes... If I had said - I love you... would you have looked at me differently... could I have held your gaze a little bit longer... could I have found myself lost in that crazy hair... If I had said - I love you... would you have found an excuse to run away with me... instead of not running away... to show you the world that you want to find... If I had said - I love you... if I had said - I love you...

I have not said those words to a woman in a very long time... a very... long time... and I have only really loved one woman in my life - unfortunately the woman that I loved to the point of madness was not the one I was saying those words to... and the woman who taught me - or tried to teach me what love is - simply was not given enough time to pull those words out of me, for I had abandoned those dreams before she came along... I have given my heart to one... my soul to another... and what ever I had left of any love  there was to give to yet another... but I do not need to love you to care about you... I do not need to love you to admire you... I do not need to love you to desire you... to want you... to use you for my selfish reasons to inspire me to greater heights... to coax the magic and the poetry from the solace of the night... I do not need to love you to draw your face in notebooks and on tables and on lonely corridor walls... I do not need to love you to use you as an excuse to want to change the world... to want to be better and do better and to give a damn about something and some one other than me... I do not need to love you... to want to be close to you... just to sit in silence with you... and know that we breathe in unison and we share the same space in a brief moment in time... I do not need to love you... to ache for you... to tear at the dawn of the day looking for the inspiration of you... to howl in madness at the moon waiting for the sent of you... to crawl through the barbed wire chaos of my mind to find these words for you... I do not need to love you...

but...

if I had said - I love you...