Where the Wild Things Are
Why did Ivo love me so? What was there about me that interested him?
"I'm very much in love with you," he said quietly in the corner of the bar. "I can't bear to be separated from you."
He said it casually as if he were merely making an observation, as if he were as surprised by the fact as I was.
I said, "I love you, too." I said it twice, to convince him, to convince myself. Because as soon as he said it I wished he hadn't. As soon as he said it, he was somehow a lesser person in my eyes. If he loved me, he couldn't be worth having.
Later I determined that he wanted me because he could never have me - I was a wild thing that would come and go on my own terms. But I was wrong again, for wild hearts can be tamed. No there was something else. Something absolutely incomprehensible to me.
"I love you," he told me later, "because we belong to one another. It's as simple as that."
It made no sense to me then. I'm not entirely certain it makes sense to me now. But, then, love is a nonsensical thing.