I am only responsible for my own heart, you offered yours up for the smashing my darling. Only a fool would give out such a vital organ”  ~ Anais Nin

She looked at him in that way that only she had, and it wrenched his heart a little more every time.

All the things that were broken about her, all the things that she tried to hide from him, were the things that he loved about her most.

She thought that he was looking for perfection and he was. Her perfection.

Her crooked little smile and the way her nose would wrinkle when she was truly displeased.

The way she was afraid of the dark and clung to him on midnight walks.

Her quick temper and even quicker slide into regret at having lost her composure. Her tangled web of secrets failed to drive him away.

He craved her passion for life and what she taught him about tenderness. He dreamt of her even when he was awake—her arms around his neck and the smell of her perfume left him simmering for her touch.

Every moment away from her light was the sweetest torture he ever hoped to endure. Even the pain of it was welcome; with her or without her he ached with an undeniable need to hold her once more.

Her magic was something he could never articulate, not even to himself, because she was ever changing, ever leaving him mystified.

She had the sun in her smile and the moon in her eyes and the stars, well, they danced in her ancient, knowing laughter.

She was the tide that rushed to his feet and threatened to pull him out to sea. He never ran from her intensity, indeed, he wished to drown in everything that spilled from within her.

But she was scared to let him in. She was sure that he would run, should she unleash the she-wolf that lived inside the dark forest of her soul.

Like a moth to a well-tended flame, he drew closer and closer until he was trapped in her inescapable spell.

She claimed that her childhood made her incapable of trust. She said that she’d hurt him, that eventually she would run.

He longed to lick her wounds and kiss her frequent tears away, hands clenching, wanting justice; he would kill to remove her pain.

She made love as if possessed and then would pull away. She begged to be owned by his dominance then accused him of breaking her will. Whatever game she played, he quietly let her win. Her scars were more than he could heal, of this he was aware.

He lived for the way her face melted into softness as she slept safe in the strength of his arms.

He lived for the way her hand slid into his; a fragile, tentative hold almost lost in the muscle of his palm.

Her chaos, her breath, her neck curled around his, her distant heart, the vulnerable patter of her feet as she approached his bed all culminated in a hurricane of emotions that he could barely survive without his heart bursting from its place within his chest.

Why could she not fall into what he offered on bended knee—his love, his devotion, his most ardent kisses that provoked even more turbulence around them?

Why did she travel his body with her lips, every one of his muscles tense as she kissed and bit and licked towards his gift for her and leave such a trail of doubt?

No matter how hard she begged him to love her, he was never able to pound away what haunted her from the past. But oh how he tried. He left her breathless, and aching and full of his desire. He punished her body with every bit of his strength, her cries a sonnet, her release a rainstorm that quenched the fire that burned inside his bones.

A love like his was everything she had called for on so many lonely nights. A love like his was patient and skilled and damn well almost made her lose her mind.

A love like his was like the mist that crept over the island where they lived, enchanted, silently comforting, thirst quenching and suffocating for a woman who did not love herself.

His beauty, his loyalty, the determined look in his eye, all shook her foundations and made her doubt his love. He was too good for her, and she so imperfect, surely one day he would understand why she needed to break his heart.

It was what she had to do.

When she left his side, his tears unwiped, her demons trailed behind her, their tails dragging in the dirt, she their mistress, a woman so bewitching that he could not tear his eyes away. His pain so brilliant that he was blinded to the fact that she looked back once and hoped he would try one more time.

But he loved her so completely, that he could only let her go.

“The most powerful relationship you will ever have is the relationship with yourself.”  ~ Steve Maraboli

~

Author: Monika Carless

Editor: Katarina Tavčar

Photo: jill111/Pixaby