Love Me Like This

Excerpt From a Novel I'll Never Write

Love is holy because it is like grace—the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.

- Marilynne Robinson from Gilead

When the light dims and I catch the turn of his jaw, the length of his lashes, the soft of his lips, my heart shatters like glass, and the sharp edges puncture through my skin. I have only known love when it hurts like this, when my skin goes ablaze at his touch—and I start to crave it, like food, like want, a foaming mouth and plump, desperate lips.

I try not to wear the love on my face, which manifests like blood. The men always have a difficult time loving me right, and I imagine to them I am stained red, everywhere, all the time. I imagine when I invite them to bed, their fight-or-flight hits, as though I am a siren, leading them to their death. They like this, at first, but not for long.

Once, he told me I kiss like I eat; ravenous and unforgiving. I understood what he meant. The one before him always bit my lip, and I could never soften into his breath, so I changed what I’d done. But into my mouth he said: No—eat me. And this turned me on even more, and I felt what I always did two weeks in: a magical feeling of ownership. I got off at him wanting me. And he wanted me.

This victim is a quiet thing. Eyes soft like air. Lashes long and curled, how I like them. Words scripted, planned, careful—but kind. Sentences short. Conversations, minimal. It took time for him to fall for me, but this is common. With love, I envelope my companions before they’d made the decision: in a way, I plan my death in advance. Euthanasia. I fall, hard and fast, and they linger a while before pulling the chord. I tell myself it’s different this time, every time. It hardly ever is. My favorite moment is always the confession: the climax of it all.

In my desperation for love, my quickness to fall into it, I admit there is an element of overconfidence. I can see their exteriors soften with time, for my words come like honey, and my eyes are wide and welcoming, and there is always just enough skin showing, for pleasure. I am smart enough to interest them, but dumb enough to avoid hurting their egos.

We spent too much time together in a short period, me and the quiet one. He had no ego I could find, and no desire for firework arguments. I was losing the game I so desperately loved. We spent and mornings together, mostly, keeping the middle parts of our days to pretend we were not thinking of the other.

It comes softly, in a drunken haze, his confession. Late at night, after a long discussion on the plot of a show we both enjoyed. I spoke more than him, which is a loss. Regardless, we were both slipping into darkness, when he muttered, “I don’t know how to love you,” and my skin grew cold, a once-sleepy, satiated, and drunken mind wide-awake. He may as well had splashed his iced water on me, and left.

I usually enjoy when they admit it: always rushed, always under whatever influence. Men have to turn themselves into boys to say I love you—and they prefer to only have a hazy memory as a reminder that they’d done it. But he strung together a collection of words in a way I’d never heard them before, slow and careful, and before I could think of a response, his breaths evened out into sleep.

I don’t know how to love you.

The words stayed with me for days as we continued the usual dance of dating: pretending someone didn’t say something they said, pretending we didn't care, pretending and winning and losing invisible power plays. I found myself hyper-focused on what I did around him, wondering what exactly he had meant. It was the first time I doubted my actions, my spectacle, my way of things. One night, I was so overwhelmed by his eyes—once endearing and sexy, now just piercing, and knowledgable, and overwhelming—my hands shook, and my sentence fell into thin air. He kissed me then—a kiss that, like he’d once claimed, was more like a bite, a devour, a sort of animal kind of feast.

And then he turned away, unpaused the movie, took a sip of his wine. The casualness of this display struck me; I felt myself losing my footing, becoming imbalanced. I found myself growing tired when I was around him, preferring to sleep rather than have sex. And that scared me more: I wondered if it was even love, for perhaps we were leering into boredom. But then he’d kiss my shoulder, and I would soften for mere moments before remembering what he’d said. I don't know how to love you.

On a rare afternoon we’d spent together, after wasting hours fucking and flirting and talking, I tried to nap, though his movement in the kitchen kept stirring me awake. The glass against the island, the shut of the door, the brush of his socks against the floorboard. I’d realized this morning, as I felt him near my bed, that I should have grown tired of the man by now… or him of me. We have been in this dance too long, this almost-but dance of relationships in the 21st century. But he set a fresh glass of water on my nightstand, and tightened the sheets around me, and my heart softened with a new feeling of relief, and the blood I often imagined dripping down my skin was no where to be found. The white sheets remained clean. My heart was not in pieces: it simply was. I did not have a feeling of death, of overwhelming desire to be alight, but I wanted to be silent, unthinking, perhaps to sleep against his scent.

He slipped into bed beside me.

I felt his hands linger in the space between us, hesitant. In my drowsy state I managed to move, and position myself against his neck, to take his hand and put it against my waist, like I know he wished to. He was good with sex, worse with displays of affection. I said, “Love me like this.”

“What?” His hand warmed the skin it touched.

“You know how to love me.”

He moved his palm up my back. “Like this?”

I made a sound of agreement.

I could feel his careful smile, but I couldn't see it. I closed my eyes. He said, “Easy, then.”

“Easy.”

Poetic License © 2025. Some stories are borrowed from life. Some, from dreams. The author makes no distinction.