Hemorrhage
There is something addictive about this. Something addictive about destroying everything you've wanted, everything that keeps your heart beating, just to keep hers beating.
This relationship started with a lie. Several lies. Lie after lie, the two of you spiraled down until everything exploded.
Then you tried the truth. It didn't last long, but you made an honest go at it. You really did try. But the truth isn't going to save her. The truth won't set her free.
Lies are what let you protect her. It was true at the start, and it's true now. And every time you think about telling her the pure truth, your tongue catches on your teeth and a lie comes out.
Most are little lies. White lies.
You add eggs to her smoothies, because she's getting so thin and pale. Then, when she's tasted it and wrinkled her nose, when she's forced you to take a sip, you swear to her that it tastes perfectly normal to you.
You buy the most expensive Kleenex, chaptstick, and throat lozenges. When she raises an eyebrow, you swear they were on sale or you've been cutting coupons.
When she squints her eyes at you over the lab desk, and asks if you slept poorly last night, you swear to her it's just your makeup, done hastily on the way to work.
And when you crawl back into bed in the middle of the night, your eyes raw from crying crumpled up on the bathroom floor, she asks if you're okay. And you swear to her that you're perfectly fine – you shouldn't drink so much water before bed.
Those are just the little lies. One little lie, then another, then another. Even little white lies are pitch black when you compile them all together.
There's something addictive about this. You tell one lie and get caught. It's terrible to watch that look on her face. It's a day before she'll look you in the eyes again. But that lie got you one step closer to saving her. So you tell another. When she finds out, it's a week until she'll speak to you over dinner instead of eating quickly before you get home. Another and another, each worse than the last, each cracking the foundation of this relationship a little more. Everything becomes more unstable. The ground shakes, and with each lie, threatens to shatter.
The biggest lies hit you both like a gunshot to the head. You watch her faith in you just bleed away, hemorrhaging, because after all this time, she still trusted you. But what she should have trusted was that you'd do anything to keep her breathing. Tear down your own life and mow down anyone who so much as thinks about stepping in your path. Tear out your own heart and squeeze it dry to keep hers pumping.
The lie of all lies is on your lips now, ready to be told. You're sure this will be the one that breaks her, breaks you. This is the one that will erase the us you two have become, the last lie you'll ever have the chance to tell her.
And you'll tell it without a second thought. You'll burn this down and watch it fall. Because maybe this is the lie that will save her.
And, after all of this, every night when you're fading off to sleep and your bare limbs are tangled with hers, you utter the greatest lie of all. You take everything that you are, everything that she is, everything you will destroy for her sake and her sake alone, and you distil it down into four useless overused words. A lie. Words that have been spoken to her by other people before you; but no one else felt like this. No one else destroyed everything for her.
I would give my own lungs to you if you would take them. If you refused, I would sedate you and perform the operation myself. Tear them from my chest and place them in yours; suture you together and call it a day. I didn't expect you, I didn't expect this. But you're here, and you're pure and bright, and I would give everything, destroy everyone, to save you.
But your tongue is immune to the truth. No amount of coaxing will bring truth forth. So instead you lie, simple and sweet.
I love you, Cosima, you say.