In Light of Love

By Diya Singh

Here is some pale attempt of mine to bring him back to me, to bring it all back. To trace it as a blood-hound does the sweet, damp trail of blood that scurries underneath the very earth. 

I think I knew it when he knelt before me. On his knees - he reached up to my face. His hands pulled me closer. There was an odd desperation - a thirst in him that I could not quench fast enough to placate him. He was more beast than he was man. Yes, he was wild. Beyond consoling. It must have been the spirit. 

He said he loved me and he was so earnest, I had to believe him. If he had been a missionary trying to convert me, I might even have bought into it. That’s just how genuine he seemed at that moment. And once it started, everything else was a blur. Days turned to weeks. 

I would sneak into his room late at night. I was ever so careful - didn’t want anyone to know that something so dark and sinister and precious was blossoming between us. 

He was much older. 

I would confess to him for that reason. I looked at him the way a devotee looked at an idol on the altar. I would beg him for signs of his love and hunt his eyes for the slightest glimmer of approval. Say it with your words, I silently egged him on. 

Please, just say you love me too. 

Say that I am not beyond reproach. 

Save me. 

I must have said it a thousand times over in my desperate messages. A thousand times over I begged him to tell me that I was salvageable, and a thousand times over he failed. 

I could not eat or sleep or think clearly. My memory was all fog and smoke and dew. All I could do was offer myself up - a lamb to the slaughter. And I watched as his axe dangled over my proverbial head. 

Delicious. All that fear and anxiety and anticipation - it would make you fat with patience. 

The days when I couldn’t see him felt like divine punishment. I call out to a God quite often in my descriptions of our relationship. Perhaps that’s the only way I can explain its abruptness and its cruelty; I chalk it up to providence. If not… it would just be abuse. Just mindless violence and cold-blooded murder - plain and clear. 

I err in my recollection. It was not all… blood and bone and tears. 

No. 

There was so much beauty in this twisted tryst. Such stillness, such vividness in our violence. 

Try as I may, the images still haunt me. Other times, I conjure them up myself to lull myself back to sleep. How masochistic of me. To savor my suffering and relish the death of something alive inside me. I can trace it all back. Blood-hound like ears - sensitively pricked up. 

Yes. I see it all so crisp and stark in the morning light. 

You should have seen him. God. 

Prickly buzzed hair that felt divine to run my hands through, blond hair at that. He needed, quite desperately, to tone it. I had told him that a few months prior. His eyes were this peculiar shade of brown. Edging on green. They would play tricks on me in the sunlight. I couldn’t tell if they were looking at me or through me. If only I knew then, maybe I could have saved myself. Each freckle, each scar, every meaningful tattoo had been stored away in my brain. I made sure to remember the tactile feeling of every important marking on his body, so that when he inevitably left me - His skin would be imprinted into mine. His skin, not his - because it made him Him. 

I can trace it all back. It seems hazy at first - like static on a television channel. But if I focus and really, truly wish to go back… I can. I can go back to that morning in bed, lying with my head on his chest - with my eyes open just a crack to make sure he was still there. 

Yes, I feared that above all, didn’t I? 

The pain and all the masochism I could take just fine, but the thought of him leaving me… God, it drove me to insanity. And so when he really did leave, I was just left with- 

What was I left with? 

A pale, lifeless ghost-like memory of him. It lingered in my bed sheets which still smelled like lemongrass and his detergent. It stained the hallway outside my room which still echoed out his name. It was all over my skin - like invisible ink - branding me for life so only I could see exactly where his touch left me changed. 

I did such violence unto myself in loving him. And now, comes the most essential part of all. To find my heart again. The blackened, charred lump that is left of it and scour it for signs of life. Resuscitate it. To bring it to life and kill it a thousand times over. To show it that love had scarred it irreversibly for all to see. To show it that another day came anyways. To show it that in all that senseless violence, there was beauty. 

Open up! See the joy of losing in love! See how blessed we are to suffer so terribly! 

O, lucky heart! Open up and swallow my love whole. 

By Diya Singh