Does It Hurt?

by H.D. Carlton

Some days I’m the ocean. Some days I’m the ship. Tonight, I’m the lighthouse: at the edge, alone, and burning.

Most girls would probably sashay into the water like they’re in a photo shoot, but my life is too uncertain not to do the things I truly want to do.

He can locate the clit. Good enough for me.

“Thank you. I grew them myself.”

“You’re going to ruin me,” he reiterates. I will. “I won’t.” At least not like he thinks. “You’re lying.” I am.

If you want a predator to submit to you, then you need to be stronger.”

“People don’t actually care about fixing you. They just want to shape your broken pieces until they fit their standards. Smooth ’em out, make ’em less sharp, so they don’t cut so deep when they collect ’em. But you ain’t any less broken.”

God, how could I not worship him? Sex with him is the only time I’ve ever prayed.

How is it that my hatred for how she makes me feel is somehow shifting, and now I’m hating the way I make her feel?

I would take the worst of him if it meant I never had to go without him.

He’s still haunting her, and all I can feel is rage because she’s fucking mine.

If I’m the devil, she’s fucking Lilith.

But when we’re stripped of our clothes and our bodies are doing the talking, we understand each other as if God was never angry with humans and separated us by the way we move our tongues.

How delicate and soft she is on the outside, but on the inside, she’s a force to be reckoned with. She’s so goddamn resilient.

She could’ve gone the other way and had plenty of room. Whether she realizes it or not, she gravitates toward me just as I do her.

I fume, any nervousness forgotten. I'm too angry, and what gave him the impression that I don't bite when backed into a corner?

“You don’t get to cry when you’re the one who ruined me.”

“Your words have always just been words,” he murmurs quietly. “But your silence is honest, and that’s where I always find my answers. That’s where I hear everything you don’t say.”

Can he hear me tell him that he is the first man I could pleasure without feeling sick? Can he hear that with him, inviting a man into my body feels like a choice and not a means to survive? Does he hear me thanking him for making me feel less broken?

Tears well in my eyes, but I force them back, not wanting anything to cloud my vision of him. My brows are pinched as I swallow them down, but I let him watch me fight to stay. I let him see that he’s worth staying for.

“There’s a place in the ocean, so deep, where not a single point of light penetrates through it. And for so long, I’ve been trapped there, unable to breathe. When I met you, you lifted me out of that darkness, and it was the first time I came up for air. You’ve become my oxygen, bella ladra, and I can no longer breathe without you.”

I’m asking myself yet again—do you want to survive? Or do you want to waste away? But what is surviving without living, and what is death without pain? It’s an empty, cracked shell where a soul has been born and where that soul will die. I no longer want to be that shell. I don’t want to just survive anymore—I want to live. And I won’t waste away, spending my days as a hollow being that awaits death like an old dog sitting on a doorstep, waiting for the day someone opens the door and invites him inside to stay.

Love is funny that way. It persists even when you’ve done everything in your power to banish it. It demands its own voice and refuses to be a slave to anyone but its own desires. And despite the power of it, those selfish desires are what make love so weak. It’s accepting the apologies of a cheating lover. It’s returning to a raised hand, over and over, until that hand becomes lethal, and home is in the afterlife. It’s clinging to a mother who never wanted you and hoping she will one day show up on those church steps. It’s grabbing ahold of a hand that belongs to both a father and an abuser, wailing as they slowly slip away. It’s falling in love with a liar, a thief, and praying they never hurt you again.

“I want a cactus,” I say finally. He pauses, glancing up at me with raised brows. “A cactus,” he echoes. “Why a cactus?” I shrug. “They’re strong and resilient, and survive under extreme conditions.”