Love Me Like I Love My Demons
by Nadia Saleh
Grief holds my hand when we cross the street. It fears the steel and glass, fears everything outside, really. Its cold blue fingers scar my palms. I hold on tighter and pretend I don’t find relief in the bite of its frost. We keep ourselves where Grief can hide its face from the world and drown me in its tears. The tears burn at first and then drag me into sweet numbness.
Rage burns in a different way. Its flame is white-hot, scorching down to the bone. But I am not its target. No, its ire is directed at its surroundings, the small, cramped apartment where we all make our home. When everything is broken and smoldering, I cradle Rage like a child and soothe it from purifying white to hot red-orange. It will start again tomorrow, and I will be there to calm it again.
Envy wants my guts. It burrows in deep through layers of muscle and tissue and fat, drinks its fill on my stomach acid and blood. It wants my insides out. Only when my intestines dangle from my abdomen will it be happy. When the carnage is over, I stitch myself up with black silk. Envy pets its hands over the sutures and coos, waiting for its next chance to eat me up from the inside out.
Pride has long fingers. It digs them into the flesh of my jaw, peels my lips back from my teeth, pinches my tongue. Anything to keep me from speaking, from screaming, from begging. Even when those long fingers leave bruises, I stay silent. I give Pride a smile with a bloody mouth and it fluffs and preens under my care.
The ones that come at night don’t tell me their names. They don’t have faces, but I know them and love them just the same. I call them Desire and I take them into my bed and hold them close under the blankets. When they shiver and wail, I comfort them with kisses and squeezes.
And when the demons gather round, teeth and claws dripping, anticipation etched into their faces, blood in their nostrils, I wonder who will love me the way I love them. Who will let me burn, clutching me close all the same? Who will eat apricots for me, so that their insides are sweet? Who will not shy away from my touch, even when it bruises?
Nadia Saleh is a Romantic romantic from southern California. She holds a B.A. in English from UC Santa Barbara and is currently enrolled in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at UMass Amherst, where she also teaches critical and creative writing. Her work can be found at Moonflake Press, among others. When not collecting shiny things for her nest, she can be found crocheting cozy things in spooky shapes. Follow her on Twitter @ghost_nadia