For each smile I manage to build the structure of on my face, I feel the cracks. There are crevices in every smile. I know the bridge is going to break, one foot wrong and it’s all gone. My version of feeling ‘good’ is to walk on egg shells, I can hear the creak of the mechanisms that string my smile up and they’re breaking at the seams and soon they’ll loosen their grip till I’m lost screaming. I take the blade across my skin and it feels like I’ve popped a balloon, the pressure is released through the blood and for a moment I can breathe without sadness, without happiness, I can just breathe in and watch the blood. It’s not like meditation, it’s not peaceful, it’s not nice, and it’s nothing. She knocks on the bathroom door, I can hear the TV blaring in the living room and some people arguing on one of her soaps “What are you doing?” she asks in THAT tone. That tone means she’s pissed. Eager at the chance for her to beat me, I open the bathroom door, hiding the cut on my thigh “Yes?” I beam an unnatural smile her way “What are you taking so long in there for?”
I shrug my shoulders and just look at her blankly before lurching towards her with a kiss
“woah! What you doing! My tv shows are still on”
“I want to eat out” I wink
She smiles coyly at me “Oh yea?”
“Yea” I wink again
I wonder if she can see the desperation in my eyes. I want her to bruise my loneliness, I want her to beat it out of me like she likes to, I want her to love me the way a woman like her does, teach me the error of my ways for all my impossible dreams. I was always a fucking dreamer, such a fucking loser. Have her beat the loser out of me, I look better in cuts and bruises otherwise I’m just a blank a canvas. I am her canvas to paint her rage upon!

In-between all this I still search for escape on the internet, but at this point I don’t know why. In the glow of the screen my loneliness is reflected on my face as I sit a click away from all the resources for women suffering domestic violence. It makes me ponder the idea of hitting her myself, so that she’ll leave me go to a shelter and I’ll have escaped her and she’ll have escaped me. A good few punches for a good cause? Could I really do it? To a woman? Then again I feel worthy of the destruction that comes with it, the aftermath and all its guilt is such an alluring idea. The thought has occurred to me I could just leave, but she’d follow me, I know she would. She’s done it before.
“What are you thinking about?” she looks at me, head tilted
“Nothing”
She puts her feet on my lap “I’ve had a hard day” she says
I know that’s a way of asking for a foot massage. I hate feet.

The tv is still blaring in the living room, glowing up the room with its falsehoods and we’re in the bedroom, I’m unfastening her bra and her breasts fall out in front of me, nipples erect. I feel the venom rush to my groin in all its sexual glory and I taste the poison on her lips, she smiles at the kiss and it feels like it did at the beginning of the relationship, when the smiles were so enticing to me they made me just want to pounce on her, and here she is now smiling as my lips press against her lips, it’s familiar, it’s comforting but it’s cold. It’s like ice is pressed between my lips and the eyes I will look into when we open our eyes, they’re blue like frozen lakes, danger lurks beneath them. One wrong move and you crack those lakes, you fall in, surrender your soul and you drown in the ice cold pit beneath. ‘mmm’ she moans as she feels my breath on her neck, I think about her like she’s a stranger, my breath on her neck and the hairs standing to attention as adrenalin kicks in. I plant kisses down her body, little seeds that were always meant to sow my love for her body, her form in all its splendour, but now each kiss is laced in secrecy and lies from one beating to the next and one reason I couldn’t but wanted to cry to the next and it goes on. I kiss a map on her body, down her legs, even her feet. I hate feet. I kiss her just where she wants me to, where she’s been waiting for me to and I’ve been building it up to this moment. I look up to her face to see the frozen lakes in her eyes become liquid and ripples sending shockwaves through her body. Never have I been so turned on, never have I felt so lost and alone.