Reflexes

I saw Will today at the college. As always, my hands began to shake at the first sighting of him ambling down the sidewalk. When his brown eyes caught my gaze, my stomach turned inside out and lay there burning. My lungs emptied and refused to be filled, sending my heart into oxygen deprived spasms.
We talked for almost one whole minute, engaging in conversation of the ‘how are you?’ variety. I don’t think we’ll ever look at each other that we won’t exchange a hungry stare—longing to say more than we're saying.
Sometimes I feel twinges of longing to sit in some coffee shop with disregarded cups of coffee steaming in front of us as we talk until the curly headed barista ushers us out to the curb so that he can sweep up the crumbs and cover the pastries with plastic wrap. I can’t help it, sometimes--despite the past, despite the pain and the misunderstandings--I just want to be with Will.
But I know that given the chance to spend an evening together, we would both leave frustrated or hurting, and I know that I would come back and sob myself to sleep with guilt and regret.
And I know that these pains of longing, these twinges of desire are just somehow reflexive, like the ghost pains in an amputated leg, or the involuntary muscle jumps of the dead.