It's Not Me It's Her

You’ll love a girl who is less like the apocalypse and more like a star field, less slaughterhouse and more home. When she touches you everything in this world will hold its breath with you, her mouth seeping like a bloody sunset into your skin. You’ll love a girl who knows refrain, who knows how not to cross the line, who doesn’t have her heart stitched to her palm, who is the sky, every corner of it, the songbirds singing, the music itself. She won’t flinch when you touch her, she won’t recoil, she’ll know exactly what to do to make your eyes roll into the back of your head. You’ll love a girl, and she’ll be so necessary, like a book or a bird of a bathtub, her eyes like champagne and glass. She’ll do this annoying thing when she sleeps with the lights on and she leaves the dirty dishes in the sink overnight, but you’ll still hold her with urgency. She will have all the right words to say. She will love you wholly and unafraid, because god knows I never could.

Reviews

[Alessander]

This builds up the Mrs-v-Mistress dichotomy masterfully.
The speaker is almost painting a pleasant picture, like she's trying to paint a Romantic landscape with grandeur and broad brush strokes.

But this is like asking Pollock to paint a scenic route.

The brushstrokes are inherently violent

"apocalypse" "slaughterhouse", "bloody sunset" "recoil" "eyes rolling", "dirty dishes" taken individually might not signify anything, but together they compose a turbulent psyche behind the words, and even somewhat of a longing to be as simple and perhaps as boring as the "Mrs" who can love "wholly and unafraid", in other words, a longing to have lived a life free of true trauma - the trauma that makes the "Mistress" recoil and unable to love wholly and unafraid.

There's a tragic awareness and maybe even resignation. And some may say that's the beginning of true wisdom, but this particular piece leaves all that unresolved.

Good stuff. As always, enjoyed your details and narration.

[Wasteofpaint666]

I was trying hard to make it violent enough to cause discomfort with my word choice, but romantic at the same time. Glad it came across. Others have read this, and disliked it. One day maybe I'll write you something 😉

[Alessander]

You did a great job of HINTING at the underlying abyss.

It created a tension and anticipation

This reminded me of an anecdote about Voltaire.

Voltaire was perhaps the greatest mind of his time, and what's more, he, and everyone else, knew it.

But one day Voltaire realized a dreadful truth.

His next door neighbor, and illiterate old lady unremarkable in every way, was HAPPIER than him.

He couldn't deny it. It was true.

Well, he ruminated and ruminated, and finally concluded, "Well, I don't want the happiness of swine"

And that was that.