Lover by Design
I’d reach for the small of her back and feel her permit it, a fraction of a flinch mastered, a stillness held on purpose, and the permission was worse than a refusal, because a refusal is honest and permission means she’s decided to endure it.
I performed loving her across a gala while she performed being loved, and we were flawless, and I have never felt further from anyone in my life.
The cruelty of it is precise, and I say that as a connoisseur of precise cruelties. For months this cover was where we hid the real thing, a couple in love pretending to be a couple in love, the performance and the truth folded so close together you couldn’t slide a knife between them. Now the performance is