it all started with a question: do you love him?

you wonder, every second, every minute, always. you had fallen for him easily, a moth to flames, since you were young and you knew nothing of the life he led, the life he had before you. you saw glamour and spotlights, a world beyond your reach; you rushed in, you dove headfirst.

you burnt.

you burn, now, bright and brittle, your tendons wrecked and eyes aghast; you scare yourself. you spend your finite eternality searching for answers you won't ever get, ruminating over the smallest of disaccords, but per usual you find nothing but him:

he holds you, here, fingers on your pulse and hair on your cold shoulder, a litany of scorching breaths: you shiver. he kisses you, ever-gentle lips sliding home, home, feathery touches, sweet wetness peppering down the column of your swan neck, proud; you want to soar into skies and seas and oven-baked clouds but you fold instead, tiny; you fear. because at the end of the day, at the exit of the tunnel: you don't know yet. you don't know if he loves you for all you are or just the smooth, youthful flesh beneath his calloused hands. you don't know if the face he shows you every morning is his true, bare face or simply another persona, another look he's tailored specifically for you, like the good actor he is. you don't know if you are wrong or if you are right, for loving the man encasing you in his arms, for giving, talking, pushing; you are afraid. to you, he is a freight train running twenty-seven kilometres overspeed, and you are willingly tied to the tracks; you may escape, but at what cost; you may die, but what significance will it make; you lose after all.

you will perish and you will live, you will cry in anguish and scream for joy, you will yearn and you will settle, no explanation offerable, just that your clumsy little ticker belongs to you no more: you had fallen, for him. you like him more than yourself, love him more than life—

you can only hope that that is enough.

***

it all started with a question: do you love her?

you never think that, quiet or out loud, the way you never think the impossibles: if you don't love her, then it cannot feel this good to be with her, then this is torment, agony, a blatant displacement of souls. you had seen her, once, and you had been fascinated, enamoured, crazy. it was your crowd, and she stuck out not unlike a sore thumb, but her beauty was painfully unmatched.

and you: you think not of whether you love her, whether you need her, because you know your damned heart and it's absolute when it devotes itself. you think, you ponder, you doubt time and again, not her but yourself; because she is a gem and maybe you don't deserve her; you love her forevermore except it can't be enough, won't be enough, for the shine in her—

it's dwindling, trickling out, red hot blood on sterile floor, crimson painting your hazy vision; her brilliance. she is lying, lying, the way she always does when something turns foul like forgotten rice in her miniature electric cooker, the way her mouth wobbles downward when she grits her teeth through period cramps—i am alright the shibboleth, misused and fake. she is in your bed, your bed, but her skin raises its natural defence of minuscule goosebumps and her toes curl, protectively, infinitely, towards her silky plantar, even when you bound yourself around her curves and bones, even when you snuggle close, even when you bleed your warmth into her; you are snuffing her light out, ruthless as a meerkat. you are worthless and she the most precious being ever born to this dying world, and maybe you are taking it all for granted because she is so voluntary, she is so entirely willing to sacrifice her essence for your wellbeing and you ain't so meritorious, ain't ever worthy. she is in your arms and you can't help yourself when you think of all the better, younger people she could have settled down with, people who are not you and will never be you, people who can give her the sense of normalcy she so desires.

you are killing her, by one of the cruelest means in the universe: love.

the worst part is that she lets you.

***

you were a girl, once, twenty years and some more ago. he was a boy, once, forty years and some more ago. the crowd is a makeshift thing—your mother, your father, your most intimate girl friend, society—unsustainable, on the verge of collapsing, but its message rings deafening in your ears for decades: you cannot love him, cannot trust him, cannot believe you belong with him. the crowd decides for you the way you must live your life, the crowd is the law and you are a good girl, the best girl; you don't disobey the law. the crowd paves the path you must follow, the crowd forges the chains you must shackle yourself to so you can be at least proper, appropriate, so you have a chance at being somewhat lovable. you've always acted nonchalant, as if their opinions were weightless, negligible, but deep down you are a whore craving acceptance, attention, affection, so you bend your own spine until you break, and even then: even then you hold on, steadfast yet docile, because it is those absurd societal norms keeping you afloat and alive (not so alive otherwise than the fact that you still breathe and grieve, but when have you ever been anything superior to your air and tear), it is the ligatures on your lanky limbs that construct your whole, it is the unshakeable dread that you will be shunned out of whatever you possess if you don't play by the damnable rules of your beloved community that save you from insanity, leaving you cleanly beheaded,

and your people, your brilliant and narrow-minded people, they're only human; they don't see. they can see but they refuse to see past your age, your physique, your standing; they refuse to acknowledge the depths of him under his looks, his money, his relationships. they choose to live blind so they can judge you and berate him, so they can treat you like a slut and him the lecherous scumbag. they won't stop; they think you the golddigger and him the sugar daddy, for reasons too simple to be a cause for hatred: you are young and he isn't, you are penniless where he has millions in his accounts, you are asian and he's a white man, you are only a student when he is a famous thespian. you want to retaliate, want to rage; but to react is to expose yourself, and you care a tad too much for him (his thriving career, his reputation), you care too much and love too much to do that to him, to take the risk that shouldn't be taken anyway—so you swallow your bitter pills and spread your feeble vessel atop proverbial wires so your man walks carefree in the sun.

you don't see the morn at the end of the road, but it is bold to assume there could be a faintest of glow to be found; and if it means your dearest chéri is safe and sound, then well, oh well, you are content to sabotage your happiness and ravage your freedom, you are almost joyous to slice your meat down to your kernel, for him.

the price is an arm and a leg; the price is something you have grown to know that you need to pay.

whatever it takes.

because only then can you glue your eyes shut at night without remorse; only then, can you forget the searing enquiry at the forefront of your battered mind:

do you love him?

***

you read a poem a long time ago, when you were still a single man, about losing your other half. you'd disregarded it rather quickly; you didn't feel the words resonant in you, and you can't understand what you can't mirror. the poem was terrific wording-wise, and you'd reread it just for good measure. it was gentle, the lines scratched out on pristine papers:

the stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
for nothing now can ever come to any good.

and you, young and criminally naive, had thought it horrendously exaggerated. you were alone and in loneliness, in isolation: you can't relate to heartbreak, to melancholy, to such despair, depression; you can't wrap your warped heart and mind around the idea of such humane misery. you exist, like that, then and now, indelible in a childlike carcass, watching as tsunamis and typhoons surge from the jaded oceans to meet your unblinking electric blues, as families fall apart and relationships flay out at the seams, as people take a shortcut through your life to never look back, never appreciate, never stay; you exist. you remain, ever-changing but unalterable, a constant. you wait.

she had tumbled her way into your soul when you thought you wouldn't ever give your adoration to anyone else again, and she stayed. she stays. you rise with every blooming dawn and your body laid sentry by her lithe flesh and you quiver in utter terror; because what if, what if: what if she peels open those gorgeous pools of honeyed amber and see you for nothing but a man her father's age, unappealing, dry; what if she wants to follow the footsteps of those preceding her, to leave for good, no strings attached; what if the old bigoted assholes two blocks away get her; what if she takes a trip outside, groceries or laundrette, and a stray car crash her down, what if, what if? there are so many possibilities, countless scenarios, and you can't keep your erratic thoughts manageable, calm; you can't halt the immortal alarum batting at your skull. you want her safe, you need her safe, yet you are all too aware of your inabilities, incapabilities, your shortcomings and your bloody insecurities, you are a middle-aged man with nothing on you but a weeny pile of wealth and a bad knee: you can't protect her.

it startles you, the pressing urgency that singes your vein with unadulterated heat, the mama bear instincts, to fend for her regardless of her obvious capability to fend for herself. it grounds you, knowing that you have her, to love and to protect, to hand out the world on a silver—no, perhaps a diamond—platter and watch in perfect bliss as she plays with it, cuts it, devours it however she please. it enrages you, to witness firsthand the brutality this community imposes on people it deems lesser—coloured, asian, female, the likes of her—when she has not done a thing wrong, when she asks for nothing but peace and a life she deserves.

and in your head, it rings true: a bad omen, an incessant sense of foreboding, the inevitable, unavoidable loss. the absoluteness of an impending farewell. the impossibility that is togetherness, that is longevity, that is him and her the couple and not the old man and the greedy young minx. the far-fetched dream: a you in plural.

yet you march on like a faithful soldier, because she loves you, however temporary that may be. you can and will endure the judgement, the comeuppance, for her heart adores you and her mouth speaks your name sweetly like the purest nectar of gods. you march on, one foot before the other, one step turning into two, three, more,

you mourn her alive.

because the question has already been answered, that fateful day many winters ago;

do you love her?

***

a cottage by the sea. a window opening out, wide, onto the windy coast. a bed of high-quality walnut wood and exquisite thousand-thread-count egyptian cotton sheets. a goose feather pillow shared between two fluffy bed-heads, one auburn and the other almost silver. a tiny afghan, barely large enough, thrown haphazardly atop tangled bodies.

laughter. playful banter. bopping each other's noses. squirming feet. complaining about morning breaths, but kissing all the same. promises about showers together in a bathroom too crowded for two adults—even though none of them exceeds six feet in height—and breakfast in bed, later. more laughter, until they are both breathless with childlike giddiness.

and still, you want to ask:

do they love each other?