Dear Sir,

Sir. I know you think I will love you but I assure you, I will not. I don’t say it to strike your ego, though it likely will due to the expectations history has created for you. Mere words, you may think. & you don’t want me to fall in love with you. It’s not that you’ll love me either, but my ego isn’t so much on the line here, as my expectations are also built of history, but a different kind. Oh, I like you. I enjoy you. I revel in the lips that entangle me in a web of inebriation that, like sweet poison, simultaneously dull my pulse & hasten my breath on your neck. You’re a mirage, sir. & like a lost traveler in a desert, I lap the sand down my throat, knowing it’s sand but enjoying the taste of water in every part of me.

I know you think that I will love you, but before I do, I will look up at the quivering image of a waterfall & dispel it from my mind. You do not know this but I have come upon a-many apparitions such as you, & have walked around them all. I don’t allow myself such fancies, you see. More words, you think, but my reputation speaks for itself; my submission is arduous. Won, rarely. Lost, always.

So, why, you might ask, finally allow submission to you? You are a man I could love so, you see, it’s not you. But then I’d require that you love me back. That’s the narcissism of love, isn’t it? So I will not ask that of you. I see you, & you see me. That is enough.

You are mine & I am yours, it’s true, for a moment. I dare not hold you, for I have learned to see your freedom as necessary to the man you present yourself to me today. & it’s that man, that free man, that holds such power over me, a free woman, except for when I extend my hands to you so that you may arrest my desires & make of them what you wish. To be seized, conquered by you; it’s as exciting as not being conquered by others.

Your submission is arduous as well, & perhaps that’s what I enjoy. That’s the narcissism of submission; we only do so with someone who reflects the deepest version of ourselves, for we do not seek to gain value from it, but to express it. [Ayn Rand]

Perhaps one day I will wake up, desire the mirage to stay ever-present, but it is that thought that will make your water bitter to me. More than a mirage - more than you -I desire reality. I desire…a love so deep that We simply won’t do. Quench me while you have me, keep the sand at bay with your touch. Until the day we have had enough, then, we’ll love ourselves the most & stagger away; intoxicated, full, ready to be sober.