Sugar

by Mia Ballard

the plan to kill Dean was born not of vengeance, but of survival. It was the primal scream in the face of an existential crisis, the decision to cut off the tumor that threatened to consume me from the inside out.

His hand in mine feels like a plea, a desperate attempt to cling to a narrative that has long since unraveled.

I no longer feel the need to dim my own light to match his dull glow.

Maybe it was the acid but as I look down at him all I see is a sentient puppet.

A 30-something-year-old woman masquerading under a relic of youthful nicknaming feels ridiculous.

Correction: I’ve gotten revenge on a few people. That’s all. Murderer sounds too serious for what I’ve done.

I reciprocated in kind, a mechanical response born of obligation rather than passion, my movements tinged with a sense of detachment.

“Repent to me, you idiot. I’m the one holding you at knife point. I am your God right now.”

“How old are you, Matthew Walsh?” A smile plays on his lips. “I'm a boy of twenty-three summers.”

This was so funny for what

This is how I viewed love: not just as the most important thing, but as the singular narrative thread weaving through the tapestry of my life. It was a strange, almost clinical obsession, a need to have my identity mirrored and validated by the man who occupied my thoughts. When I looked at a photo of myself, I could pinpoint exactly which man had been the center of my universe at that moment. Each captured smile, each distant gaze was a timestamp of obsession.

Love, for me, was an endless cycle of rebirth and death; each man a phoenix rising from the ashes of the last, burning brightly before succumbing to the inevitable. And I, ever the devoted keeper of these flames, continued to mark my life with their passage, a perennial witness to both conflagration and smoldering ruin.