Paradoxical kiss

"I see in you this wish to simplify me. To have me change and with singular purpose focused upon you, forsaking the darker shades of my creativity and licentiousness. It is beyond you to accept who I am and still love me the way you do.
Do you not see the paradox? In this change, the midnight creature you seek to captivate would no longer exist. I would cease to be this libertine of a woman. This vastly complex, frustrating, difficult, ridiculous woman is the embodiment of your desire, don't try and rectify that."

- Eloise

You need to stop caring.

I was a shadow of love, then. A mirage of the purity I wanted you to see reflected in me. Demons always dwelt in this temple of ruin - and I kept them from you... from everyone. I guarded my secret, sullied self with icy perfection, so that when you left, I ignorantly reassured myself that you never really knew me nor loved me. There was a sad solace in that.

You damned me for a few words of honesty I spoke to you at a party once, cuttingly polite, drunk with the strain of pretending not to want you. I succumbed to my shallow, yet fervent desires. I made a mistake that night. I finally revealed something of my true self; something dark that shattered the world you had balanced so carefully upon your denial.

I saw your pain then, and I see it now. Like the poison intoxicating your veins, like vermilion cigarette singes on the back of your heart, I tore through your ravaged soul. I told you it would come to this. A pasquinade you never truly accepted as realism.