Persephone

What he doesn't know is that I saw him first. 

It was at a party I hadn't wanted to go to. I sat on the bench by my door with one shoe on and one shoe off for a half-hour before leaving, singing The Clash to myself. "Should I stay or should I go..." Being confident and empowered — entering social spaces with height and swagger, looking completely at ease drinking and eating alone, infiltrating pairs and cliques — can get exhausting when you have to do it again and again. And again. 

He was standing at a table scattered with hors d'oeuvres, absent-mindedly stabbing at a wheel of Brie with one hand and balancing a drink in the other while staring out the window. The snow falling beyond the pane matched the silver that streaked across his right temple. His long legs were shod in black and his smoky grey t-shirt was artfully half-tucked. The complement of black leather accessories — boots, belt, cord around his neck — all showed just the right amount of rough wear.

He was tall, dark, and clearly dangerous. My preferred palette.

I drifted to a corner of the room where the host's art was hanging on the wall. It was a large square canvas, a splatter of red on a dark background. "Anemone," I thought.

His voice snaked over my shoulder from behind. It carried a note of grit, which only heightened the tension. Its tone and cadence momentarily took my breath away; I imagined his hand inside a glove, reaching around to cover my mouth and nose.

"You can't be at a holiday party and not have a drink," he said. I turned to find him holding a martini glass filled with blush pink liquid, a few pomegranate seeds floating on the surface. He offered it to me with a sliver of a smile, one eyebrow cocked, and a sort-of apology: "It looked festive?"

We disappeared not long after. In his lair, day looked the same as night and though I knew the Earth was spinning on its axis in orbit, I couldn't tell you how many times we revolved in space before it occurred to me that time had passed. Under his gaze the world stood still, and I inhabited that space as if I had never known any other.

His sheets were white and they acted like a spotlight, illuminating everything I needed to know about how he was made — the off-centre cleft of his chin; the vein that beat faintly over his left eyebrow; the strength he wielded with both authority and care; the tiny red scar on the inside of his thigh, where his dog had bitten him when he was a child. The kitchen that flanked the west wall of his cavernous abode gleamed, though he never used it himself. I stood barefoot at the stove, making pancakes and omelets in shiny pans that got licked by the gas flame for the first time as I fed us breakfast at all hours — whenever it was we tumbled apart and felt a different hunger rise. We played each other favourite records from his vinyl collection and told each other secrets while we braided our limbs together on his leather couch in the dark. He thought I couldn't see him crying in that dark, but that was my cue to say nothing and instead cover his hand with mine.

When I finally resurfaced, there were assumptions and judgements to face. They said he wasn't good for me — or anyone. They said he lured souls into his private hell and chained them there forever. They said he was incapable of love. And so how could I be self-aware and self-respecting while giving him what was undeniably a deep affection? They demanded to know. But how does one explain something that is unexplainable? Something that simply is? Most of all, how could I convince them of the most crucial part of the story: I saw him first.

I saw him first and I knew in that moment he would never love me. He couldn’t. He knew he wanted to; he knew he should. But the implacable wound that gnawed at him meant he could only hold me captive by turns. His attention and fidelity would always come and go, drifting with life’s endless push and pull. He needed me most when his days were long and dark, when he needed his heart fed as desperately as his body. He needed me most when he craved happiness as much as lust. And all those things — love in whole — were mine to give, even if he never knew how to receive.

So I return to him like the seasons — in due time, in a predictable pattern. Not because I have to. But because what I give keeps his world turning.