I hand her my spoiled apple.

“Do you want a bite?“

She had always chased the sadness inside of me.

Her eyes dart to the bedroom floor and stay there.

“It’s too much. This, what we have now, is enough.”

She pulls an airplane bottle of vodka from her tattered leather Kate Spade purse along with a Marlboro 27.

“When will you ever be mine?”

“At least I’ll always know I smoke better cigarettes than you.”

I snicker at my audacity. I know I’d promised my little sister I quit,

but I pull out my pack of Marlboro Black shorts.

All I need to feel is that sharp tug of nicotine in the back of my throat. Maybe, that would blunt the pain of her response.

I crack my knuckles in a nervous habit.

We’re literally sitting on my bed staring at each other.

There are dead butterflies in my stomach.

“I’m not a possession. We are impermanent. Anything else you could argue would be frivolous. I love you, isn’t that enough?”

Her words are like the strings of a puppet master, they beguile my will.

Her eyes are like narcotics. Potent.

I find myself doped from her hazel irises.

I’ve lost all conviction.

We eventually give in. Right?

“I love…I love you too.”

I juggle my spoiled apple from hand to hand. I’m famished.

I take a bite and wretch from its foul taste.

She just stares at me.

Her eyes show pity and little else.

I hold back my tears and continue to eat the foul fruit.

I must prove to her that I can stomach every last bite.

“Do you want me, right now?”

I concede that I am a foolish man. My hands know more of lust than love.

I submit to my Queen of Hearts,

my drug of no choice.

She knows my every hand before I can bluff.

I’ll always be an addict to people I cannot trust.

“You already know the answer. Let me taste you.”

I escape into euphoria. She has taken the safest parts of myself hostage.

Her nails dig into my back to remind me that I am hers.

The pain reminds me that I am most certainly alive.

I bite her lip to remind her that she is too.

Love is scarlet red. It trickles down my back and stains my bedsheets.

Love is dark purple. It bruises the lips that rarely smile.

Love is unrequited.