When I told you that I loved you, I meant it.
I meant it more than I have ever meant anything in my entire life. As those three little words danced past my lips, I felt their dazzling fire burn through me with the most pleasant sting I have ever experienced. I felt it in my mind as it was engulfed with the dizzying impression of falling and flying and spinning all at the same time. I felt it in my heart as it beat feverishly in my chest, sending waves of hot passion to every part of my body. I felt it in my soul as it seemed to leave my person to fly in sweeping loops around the room. It returned to me with a newfound and eternal longing to soar once again, and the knowledge that I would never be able to supply it with the same sensation. I felt it in my hands as they trembled, and in my feet as they shuffled nervously.
And perhaps due to all of these things, I truly believed that you meant it as well. It could be because I misidentified the blaze that had burned brightly in your eyes, or your hands that shook along with mine. Or because I was blinded by my own emotion to the way that you refused to meet my eyes as you pledged your heart to me. Fooled by the theatrical elements in your voice that expertly masqueraded as real feelings. I’d taken your words of pretend love and placed them on the highest pedestal in my heart, and I would be as much of a liar as you if I were to say that I’ve since removed them. I’d imprinted your voice into my soul, and often indulged in its lilting sweetness in times we’d spent apart.
I haven’t stopped meaning them since, nor has the fire that consumed my senses faded away. The only difference is that now the fire chars my heart, simmers my blood, and melts my brain so that I am reduced to nothing but the burnt remnants of who I used to be. In the days when my soul was quite content in not flying amuck, and my heart was clean and empty. All I ever wanted in this world was for you to experience the same beautiful sparks that I did, before they were mutated into a deadly inferno. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t manage to show you their otherworld beauty; all that you saw was their capability of great destruction. So I had to show them to you in a different way, in my final remaining option.
If you would refuse to accept the beauty of the blaze, I would have to give you no other choice in the matter. I needed you to see the fire, I needed you to feel my love. Even if you felt it in the way I did, as a scathing torrent of unending anguish. So I did it. After all these years, you finally got to experience my sweltering passion. Unfortunately it was not by my tactic of unconditional and everlasting devotion, but by a much more powerful means.
I knew the path to your house even better than I knew the way to my own, and I walked the whole way there. I was blanketed by the warm night air and passed serenely through the fireflies, which seemed to serve as a mild indicator of what was to come. I entered your home with my copy of the key I had made during the week in which you had me water your plants while you were away on vacation. I couldn’t help but notice that it smelled exactly the same as it always had, and paused for a moment to breathe in the sweet, familiar aroma. Oh, how I wished so dearly that your cruelty had not driven me to this.
Very softly and slowly, I began to pour the first of many large containers I had brought with me onto your floor, your sofa, your cheery little coffee table.
Why couldn’t you have loved me?
I passed through your kitchen, your bathroom, your basement. With great tenderness and the utmost care, I saturated each of your belongings. I thought of you with each of the items: you watching the television, you relaxing in the recliner, you idly glancing through the magazines on the bathroom floor.
I was everything you could have ever wanted.
I walked backwards up the stairs, holding one of the canisters in my hand as a flood of pungent gasoline rushed down your stairs. I mourned silently for the sweet fragrance of your home that I had taken time to savor before ultimately extinguishing.
I don’t understand why you won’t love me back.
I tipped gasoline into the potted houseplants you had once enlisted me to water, pondering the vast difference between such similar motions.
Please love me.
Finally, I soundlessly opened your bedroom door and tiptoed inside. I was hit with such a strong sense of longing that I nearly fell over. My eyes fell upon your sleeping figure, curled preciously up within your bedspreads. I note that you still sleep in the same position that you always have, and that you still mutter traces of your dreams while asleep. The flames within me sear more painfully than ever before.
I use the remainder of my final can of gasoline on myself, finding a strange, soothing coolness in the liquid bathing my skin. I relish the feeling of your soft t-shirt against me as I curl myself up against you, burrowing my head into the crook of your neck. A small noise escapes your throat, and you shift and you begin to awaken.
I love you more than you could ever imagine. From the moment we met at sixteen years old, to right now as I lie next to you for the final time. I loved you when I caught you with another woman, and as you laughed in my face and told me you never loved me. I loved you when you blocked my phone number after I called you sixty-eight times in the same day. I loved you when you got a restraining order against me. I loved you when my parents sent me away to a place with a lot of people telling me I was “mentally unwell”.
You created an unforgiving fire inside of me. A fire that devastated everything that I ever was, and left only smoldering ash. And now, after twelve long years, you will finally know what it’s like to be incinerated by flames that you did not create. I withdraw a lighter from my pocket, and lift my face to look at you one last time before the fire of undying love consumes both of us. You are just beginning to process what is happening as I meet your eyes, and I give you one final smile before flicking the flame upward. And finally, you experience the agony of fire, of love. Because if there is one thing you have taught me, it is that they are one in the same.
I tell you I love you as my inner fire explodes into existence. And I mean it with all that I am.
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