Content Warning: readers should note that this piece contains themes of sexual violence.

All my life, I've searched for love - in the dirt of my fingernails, the lines of colorful bins outside my hostel corridor, the black of the gutters, between the black jacks that swerve side to side behind my hostel block, in the sky, in the clouds that take form of various animals every day except Sundays, where an angel rises from the east. I searched everywhere and still, I could not find love. I cannot find it.

At first, I wasn't looking for anything intense - no, I was searching for someone to understand me. I couldn't go to my parents; they wouldn't understand, they never do. Crossing that off the list, I welcomed a group of friends. They were lovely people, but I couldn't pour myself into fragility. I needed something hard but tender; I needed to be pushed from a cliff, but with the assurance that there was a trampoline waiting where I would land. Still, I continued to search and soon enough, I was led into the hands of those who think themselves high and mighty beings because of the long thing between their legs.

These people treated me like an egg, a fragile being, sоmеonе who, without them, would be lost. According to these people , I had to be grateful for the love they offered me, so I let myself be grateful. I let them scan my body with their eyes, their rough, unbalmed lips, and their itchy hands, but still I couldn't feel anything. I mimicked the voices of the women on those lovely sites, and it made the heads of the men in my life swell. One didn't even ask for my body; all he needed was a voice note of my rehearsed sex song, and he went straight to heaven. When they asked me to worship them, I refused. They offered me nothing. Why would I worship a stingy god?

But I became bored. I had had enough of feeding into their egos and receiving nothing in return. I didn't intend for what happened next, but God always has his ways of doing things, doesn't he?

I met a siren. Yes, a siren. She had the face of an angel, a body duly shaped like a bottle of Fanta, and a voice – her most enchanting feature– like the gentle lapping of waves on a shore. We didn't need to touch each other, по. Our love had manifested beyond that. We were tender to each other, and that was all that mattered. That, and our burning love. We never asked about each other's pasts; it didn't matter. All the things that we had done before didn't matter. In our love, we were present, and present was good. She was like a ghost, coming and going as she pleased but I didn't bother her about my thoughts on this habit. . I didn't want to ruin what we had.

Once in a while, she would coat her hands with oil and bring them to my lips, whispering sweet nothings that I could never understand. It might have been prayers or a spell to ward off evil; I would have let her cast all the spells she wanted just because. Even though we understood each other and our love was solid, I knew she wouldn't stay long, just like I knew she wasn't entirely mine. She belonged to the world, and everything in the world was hers. How could one keep such a person away from all that? When she decided to leave, I didn't beg nor did I weep, I bade her farewell and sank into the hardness of my bed.

She still appears in my dreams to this day, and I have accepted it as the only way we can be together.

For a long time, I searched for love in the light, and the stink of fragility engulfed my senses and deluded my sense of being. It wasn't enough, so I searched the dark.

You see, what I searched for was forbidden. I longed for soft and tender flesh, for a pure soul devoid of society's pull, who would lash me until I cried red. I craved love from owners of soft bodies with harsh hands so I let myself be bullied, cast aside, strangled to the point of death and I asked for more. I let myself be beaten, tied to the door, drugged, whipped to their satisfaction and mine. I drank poison from their lips, I licked nectar from their breasts, and I drank wine from their hands. Kneeling at their altars and performing rituals in their names were the least of the things I did. They loved me, I could see it in their eyes.

‘How much could they take?' they asked themselves as they strapped me to their beds and whipped me senseless. The worry in their eyes confused me, 'It's okay’, I said, assuring them as I licked my blood off their fingers, ‘I can take it'. Some held my face in their tiny hands and cried for me, and I licked the sweet salt from their faces. Some scorned me and punished me harder - I am grateful to them for that. Others convinced themselves that they couldn't do it and left- some came back.

In my search for love in soft lips and harsh hands, I have become exhausted. My body cries a soft red, day and night. The soul is willing, but my body is weak. In my search for Love, I have died and resurrected in people's bodies and souls many times. Now, where do I go from here?