Spoiler! :
I never minded any of it.
I didn’t mind your anger – it was the fire in our relationship, day and night. I can’t pretend that I liked it, or that it didn’t upset me, but I soon accepted that it was a part of you, as much as your blood and bones. Tears don’t quench a flame, so I learnt to battle the pain and embrace it. Though your anger would consume me, it was my fault if it hurt.
The accusations always followed. Goddammit, did they hurt me – sharp, painful words that sunk their way through my skin and stayed there, burning my body from the inside out. I could never make you understand, never manage to show you that you were all I wanted. Yet I needed those words, and the agony with them, to remind me that you loved me. You wanted my heart for your own.
Then there were the bruises. Call me odd, but I actually kind of liked them. I liked the way they mottled my skin, like dark ink, and created a map of the places where your fists had touched, where the elegant ridges of your knuckles had pressed into my body. I never told you, but with each bout of bruising, I would stand unclothed in the bathroom, gazing at myself in the mirror. I’d squint my eyes until the welts blurred into blotchy messages and black flowers, and find the phrase ‘I love you’ written beneath my skin. You’d always choke those words out later, when you fell to your knees and begged through your tears for my forgiveness.
The cuts were similar, though they felt different. The lines in my skin were too bright, too sharp, to seem loving, and instead looked like the markings of a monster. When they started to heal, I kept them covered, but when you left me lying on the floor, bruises blooming on my skin, I’d press my fingertip into the blood on my cheekbone and print scarlet petals around my navel, creating a single rose amongst the black and blue.
I hated the broken bones. They never occurred too often, thank goodness, but I could never stand it when they did. Aside from the long-lasting pain, I hated how you could never do anything to fix it – if I had to be broken, I wanted you to put me back together again. You did your best, I suppose, carrying me clear across the city to a hospital, but the nurses were never like you, their voices a rushing blur of nosey questions that they had no right to ask. I missed your healing hands, and how your lips would kiss every blemish you caused just to show that you were sorry.
I never minded any of it. That’s what people never understood.
“He’s killing you!” they’d say. I can still hear them. “But you love him so much you can’t see it.”
They were so sure. I let them be sure.
But they were wrong. I had always known it would come to this. From the first blow, I had seen our story play out, rolled out like a ribbon on a bloody horizon.
And this is how it ended:
In a fit of rage, you reached for the knife – the steak knife, of course, I had always known that would be the one – and plunged it through my chest without thought. You pierced my skin, forced the metal through each and every bar and bone, and ripped into the cage where my love was confined, letting it spill on the floor for all the world to see. It didn’t take long for the panic to set in – from the release of the knife, the world came crashing down around your ears. You fell to the floor and wrapped your arms around me, palming blood onto my face with your shaking hands. The ‘I love you’s and ‘sorry’s left your lips multiple times, and I trembled with the effort of trying to return them. Every breath pulled the knife a little deeper into my ribcage, every pulse of blood pumped pain through my body, yet I forced my eyes open, kept them locked on yours, and fought the tears long enough to memorise your face. It was the temptation that took me, the promise that closing my eyes would make everything okay, that the darkness would cloak me in a painless cocoon from which I would emerge, like fire from a furnace, when the time was right.
I had always wanted to die in your arms.
I didn’t mind your anger – it was the fire in our relationship, day and night. I can’t pretend that I liked it, or that it didn’t upset me, but I soon accepted that it was a part of you, as much as your blood and bones. Tears don’t quench a flame, so I learnt to battle the pain and embrace it. Though your anger would consume me, it was my fault if it hurt.
The accusations always followed. Goddammit, did they hurt me – sharp, painful words that sunk their way through my skin and stayed there, burning my body from the inside out. I could never make you understand, never manage to show you that you were all I wanted. Yet I needed those words, and the agony with them, to remind me that you loved me. You wanted my heart for your own.
Then there were the bruises. Call me odd, but I actually kind of liked them. I liked the way they mottled my skin, like dark ink, and created a map of the places where your fists had touched, where the elegant ridges of your knuckles had pressed into my body. I never told you, but with each bout of bruising, I would stand unclothed in the bathroom, gazing at myself in the mirror. I’d squint my eyes until the welts blurred into blotchy messages and black flowers, and find the phrase ‘I love you’ written beneath my skin. You’d always choke those words out later, when you fell to your knees and begged through your tears for my forgiveness.
The cuts were similar, though they felt different. The lines in my skin were too bright, too sharp, to seem loving, and instead looked like the markings of a monster. When they started to heal, I kept them covered, but when you left me lying on the floor, bruises blooming on my skin, I’d press my fingertip into the blood on my cheekbone and print scarlet petals around my navel, creating a single rose amongst the black and blue.
I hated the broken bones. They never occurred too often, thank goodness, but I could never stand it when they did. Aside from the long-lasting pain, I hated how you could never do anything to fix it – if I had to be broken, I wanted you to put me back together again. You did your best, I suppose, carrying me clear across the city to a hospital, but the nurses were never like you, their voices a rushing blur of nosey questions that they had no right to ask. I missed your healing hands, and how your lips would kiss every blemish you caused just to show that you were sorry.
I never minded any of it. That’s what people never understood.
“He’s killing you!” they’d say. I can still hear them. “But you love him so much you can’t see it.”
They were so sure. I let them be sure.
But they were wrong. I had always known it would come to this. From the first blow, I had seen our story play out, rolled out like a ribbon on a bloody horizon.
And this is how it ended:
In a fit of rage, you reached for the knife – the steak knife, of course, I had always known that would be the one – and plunged it through my chest without thought. You pierced my skin, forced the metal through each and every bar and bone, and ripped into the cage where my love was confined, letting it spill on the floor for all the world to see. It didn’t take long for the panic to set in – from the release of the knife, the world came crashing down around your ears. You fell to the floor and wrapped your arms around me, palming blood onto my face with your shaking hands. The ‘I love you’s and ‘sorry’s left your lips multiple times, and I trembled with the effort of trying to return them. Every breath pulled the knife a little deeper into my ribcage, every pulse of blood pumped pain through my body, yet I forced my eyes open, kept them locked on yours, and fought the tears long enough to memorise your face. It was the temptation that took me, the promise that closing my eyes would make everything okay, that the darkness would cloak me in a painless cocoon from which I would emerge, like fire from a furnace, when the time was right.
I had always wanted to die in your arms.
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