You Can't Tell the Heart Not to Love

He was beautiful, and lost
A lot like me, on the inside,
Or so I thought.

That first betrayal,
It felt like someone had cut into my chest with one of those grapefruit spoons,
The ones with the teeth,
And scraped my heart out and stomped on it.

He'd used me.

He'd conned me.
For months, he'd conned me.
Me, the master conman!

And he was bloody brilliant!

So, I forgave him, eventually,
Because you can't tell the heart not to love.


He was charming and charismatic,
And Iesu, he smelled good!
And he was so bloody full of himself that he really thought I wanted him,
So it was easy to con him,
Certainly easier than it should have been
For a man trying to save the woman he loved.

But eventually, I did want him.

It felt good to be touched and teased and cherished and valued
In a way that she couldn't do,
Even before she became something both less and more than human.

By then, it was too late.
I'd been deceiving him for months, and I was too afraid to confess my crimes.
I had to take care of things myself, and it did not go well.

When he killed her,
When he gunned down the only thing I had left from before my world went to hell,
When he took away my every waking thought,
My every sweet dream,
My every sleep-shattering nightmare,
My every excuse for dallying with him,
(Because, really,
I did it all for her,
Only for her,
To protect her,
To keep her safe,
Honestly)
I hated him with a white-hot intensity that made my entire body burn.

I wanted to rip him open with my bare hands,
Tear out his guts, and strangle him with them.
I wanted to gouge out his eyeballs and shove them down his throat for him to choke on.
I wanted to knock him to the ground and jump on him,
To feel his skull crush, his ribs snap,
Every bone in his body break under my weight,
Until he was nothing but a bloody spot on the pavement,
But I couldn't.

So I mourned,
I grieved,
I ached,
I hurt.

He consoled,
He comforted,
He listened,
He forgave.

He forgave me!

And bit by bit, day by day,
He helped me construct a new world for myself,
One that made a twisted kind of sense.

He gave me new tasks which inspired new thoughts and dreams,
New nightmares, too,
But even they were a welcome change from the hell to which I had consigned myself.

Eventually, I didn't need any excuse to dally with him.
I just did.

Because you can't tell the heart not to love.


We had two good years together.

They weren't always easy;
They weren't always happy,
But they were always worth it
Because he was always brilliant,
And he really was like me, on the inside.

He knew he wasn't the first,
He knew he wouldn't be the last;
And I'm sure he was ok with that
Because when I'd forgotten, he taught me again:
No matter how hard it is,
No matter how much it hurts,
No matter how great the risk,
You can't tell the heart not to love.