Property of Love

“But I love you.”

Those words pried through his teeth and escaped his lips. I knew he was lying.

Saying those words came to easily.

I couldn’t see the pain in his eyes, or hear the passion in his voice.

I couldn’t tell if he realized he was lying.

I looked at his feet ,they were perfect.

They weren’t bantered or bloodied.

He didn’t walk through a hell where spikes and thorns replaced the floor. Where the dried stains came together to tell the story of how boy fought for girl.

How the heat the hell emitted kept their relationship alive.

Ours ran cold.

His feet were perfect.

I looked up at his face again.

I didn’t find love, not that I searched for it.

I found lust where you would find love.

I sought ignorance where I should’ve been educated.

He had blinded me for so long.

But in that moment with those words, in that voice, my lens was rattled and somehow brought into focus.

The sheets soaked with our sweat had been wrung out into container.

A grey tray that held the pillow talks and forbidden games we once played. The picture was developed in a red room that you couldn’t see in until you turned on the lights. And they were off. 

In the dark all I could see was I love you.

But when the switch was flipped I noticed the don’t in the middle of that phrase. 

He didn’t love me.  He loved the way my legs spread for him. His fingers were at home on my neck and my panties belonged on the floor.

In his eyes he was my owner.

And I was his property bound by the notion of love.