"I used to think of you as someone that would never, ever hurt me, ever."

prologue.

i still remember

how is it that you go about defining good...

I know you love me the way a captain loves his ship as the waves come rolling in— the shield from the ocean of reality that crashes in as the clock strikes twelve. My time to leave arrives at every moment the water fills the deck.

I should leave.

I just can't.

You are my titanic— this huge promise of a better tomorrow that I seem to willingly take even if my mind screams profanities at me, asking me to run the other direction. We are the tragedy that mothers tell their children at night, a twisted version of the most saddest love story yet anything but. You are my titanic... and yet it seems like I am the unfortunate ship because as my love and I start to sink into the indefinite darkness, all I can do is watch as you swim further away from me.

I should leave.

I try.

But it seems like I need you the way a canvas is incomplete without its colors. I need you to paint my body with shades I can't ever seem to remember the names of. I need you to tell me I am beautiful even if it is a lie just so I can spite at the mirrors back at my empty house— "You love me still."

"You love me still," in the promises you make that I know you will never keep.

"You love me still," as the tips of your fingers gently tracing my skin become the names of all the other women you have loved.

"You love me still," in the unkempt bed where I am your muse, your love and your lie— the only way of forgetting while wishing for the warmth she gave.

Sometimes I wonder if kissing her would be like kissing you too— if loving her will remind me of a time where you loved me not because you had to but because in a room of people with boring faces and overbearing work schedules, I was the eclipse.

"You love me still," even when you curse my name for wasting your time because truly if you loved her, you would let me go. But then, if you loved me, you would unlock the chains that have been forced on me ever since the world dimmed to a hazy picture of the pain we have hidden under our bed like the candies our parents told us not to eat.

I should leave.

It's just too hard.

You are the only thrill I have ever known— the only thing I can blame when the voices in my head are too prominent. You are my ship, and sometimes I wonder why you haven't left every single time I say the wrong thing, or be the worse person.

Sometimes I wonder why you love me but then perhaps, it's because of the fact that I am your only story too while she is the footnote I try to pretend doesn't exist. Perhaps you love me because I am your sanctuary— because you know there is nobody else on earth that will love you for who you are now.

Perhaps, you love me because while her beauty is the sky, I am the sea... her reflection.

You are the oscillation between my redemption and my loss of humanity. You are the sins I crave in the dead of the night when the lonely stars don't give any hope and the soundlessness of our anger that makes me want to find faith once more.

I should leave.

I should— but somehow, when you kiss me and lie to me about how our love is the strongest medicine, I don't want to leave at all.

...and evil?

You used to have a near perfect life. I took it from you. You've become a monster. I made you that way, and I'll be damned if I let you escape the dream of me.

Eventually, you will learn to embrace it. You already learned effectively how to hate, how to stop feeling. I can see you trying to distance yourself. You think you have found peace in solitude, when before it had only scared you. You have become colder. You are losing who you used to be. Realities that previously you denied out of fear, you now embrace. You know your life, whatever's left of it, is going to be empty without me. You'll fall in love again, you will have to plan your life around my absence , every second of every day till death arrives on your door.

Your days will be filled with repressed memories, and music cranked up too loud. Your nights will be filled with nightmares and half-formed wishes if you're lucky. If not, you'll be left awake to the torments of your mind, to my memory. You will spend your time berating yourself, avoiding meals, trying to starve yourself into oblivion, fueled by self-hatred.

For some time, you'll be too ashamed to go out, to show the scars that you're covered in, your own handiwork, or should I say, mine? You and me, we were a great team, trying to gain sympathy from the cruel world. It barely worked. You were ready to give up. I took it a step further.

I drove everyone away from you, and it worked. You are my prisoner, and when I die... so shall you.

I'm only using what the Gods gave me.

author's note:  unreliable narrators uff... am I right?