Hold Me Under

by Riley Nash

He’s a simple, pure person, made of cats and cookies and little brick houses full of afternoon sunlight. I’m made of mud and broken things, deep water and suffocation.

I hate that I look for him whenever he’s not here. I hate the relief when he appears, like all the bad ways he makes me feel are the only anchor I have.

No one ever comes back for me. Until you.

“I never asked for this body, the things it needs. I never consented to it. And of all the exquisite fucking hells I’ve known, this sexuality has been at the heart of the very worst.”

“I’ve always believed I came from the water. It speaks to me. It keeps me alive, and I always thought it would take me back.”

“I’ll show you how to take what you want, how to own me. I’ll teach you how to hurt me.”

“Don’t you get it? If I’m not a bad person, then what we have, you and I, it doesn’t exist.”

He’s like a piece of lazy Italian summer that has been locked away in the dark for too long.

Many people have loved me, with many kinds of love, and that love has been all the worst days of my life, all the darkest nights. I’ve learned to shut myself off, to do everything that’s asked of me without feeling a thing, and I can’t stop because my body’s only purpose is to be used. But he’s not here to love me, and that promise has filled me with a dangerous hope.

“If I made you think I’m strong, it’s not true.”

I run my hand down his chest, play with his stiff, dark nipples as I start thrusting into his mouth. “You can take me all the way, can’t you? I love seeing your lips stretched around my base.”

“No one’s been good to you, have they?” I whisper.

“You’re so good, baby. You’re gonna come for me.”

The boy with the pretty eyes is important. He’s real. And right now, I’m having a hard time convincing myself he wasn’t meant, from the beginning of fucking time, to be right here.

Hate is intimate, endless, obsessive. Addictively co-dependent. You can’t disappoint someone who believes in the worst possible version of you. You can only memorize them, every hope to break, every vulnerability to tear open, until they’re your everything and you’re their shield against the nightmares that you made for them.

“I want to be the one who keeps you safe, the only one that hates you right.”

“It hurts too much,” he whispers. “I need to quit you slow, or it’s going to kill me.”

“Tell me you love me.”

“Why does it have to be this way, Victor? Why do you fucking do this to me? Why am I not fucking good enough?”

I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering if he’s ok and how I can live without the pieces of me I gave to him.

“You don’t understand. Look at you. Look what you’ve fucking done to me. How can you not be perfect? It’s not possible.”

Our bodies fit together perfectly, every hill and valley contoured to each other like we were one person who got broken in half before we were born.

You tore me open and put me back together but you kept something for yourself. You won’t give it back, and now I belong to you.

“You’ll meet a guy, someday, and he’ll get to see all the parts you’re hiding from me. And you’ll let him keep you.”

“Hey, listen. You can have me any way you want, every way we’ve tried, any name in the world. I don’t give a fuck anymore because I just need you. That’s it. I can’t live any other way.”

“I love you so fucking much. It doesn’t matter if you want me to or not because I can’t help it. It’s my secret, and I’ll never tell you.”

And sometimes we say I love you, and sometimes we say I hate you, and sometimes we just exist together without a name, two stars in the universe, and it doesn’t matter because they’re all different names for the same thing, something that will never belong to anyone but us.