I, The Divine

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If I were to write our love story, no one would believe it. My real-life story is unbelievable. I tell my friends, but they dismiss my love for you as puerile, inconsequential. I tell them what happened and they consider me foolish. Perhaps I never manage to convey how much I loved you. I say it: I love you. I love you so much, my heart aches, a physical hurt. But what does it mean really? Words, nothing but words. If I could show them how much I loved you, how much I love you still, they might see why I stayed, how I let the story unfold. If I could show them, I would be able to explain how I let the cruelest man in the world destroy any remaining dignity I might have had.

So how? How can I describe to a passerby the way I felt about you? I can’t tell stories of what we did together. We did nothing. We never went anywhere, an entire relationship spent in my bed not having sex. Do I describe in loving prose how you look? Do I tell how you held me, how I felt in your arms? I don’t know how. It would have to be something different. I can talk about how it felt when I knew it was over.

In front of a painting. That’s how I knew. Titian. The Flaying of Marsyas. Apollo killed the satyr Marsyas by skinning him alive. His muscles exposed, every vein and sinew seen. Repulsive. Left with nothing to hang on to, no honor, no decency, shamed. I opened myself to you only to be skinned alive. The more vulnerable I became, the faster and more deft your knife. Knowing what was happening, still I stayed and let you carve more. That’s how much I loved you. That’s how much.