You retreat.

Finally fall silent. Instinctively lock all the words away.

You befriend pretence.

Paint the smile upon your lips. Conceal the eyes once bright behind the darkest glass. Persuade your mind to cease its remembrance.

You live.

Talk and joke and laugh. Dance with abandon. Walk freely in the sun. Tilt your delicate face to meet its restoring rays.

You lie.

Live out the lie. Embrace the comfort of performance. Fool those who surround you by day.

Until the truth returns.

Until honesty exacts its brutal revenge.

Until it comes to you in the gloaming, in the moment the night’s nascent darkness dims the walls and cools the air.

Until it comes for you, preying upon your soul and your body, plundering the craving that refuses to sleep.

The craving. The hunger.

For him.

The hunger confessed in whispers and sighs to empty rooms, in the sheen upon your skin when his voice rushes back, in the sodden mess your hand seeks out compulsively between your legs.

The hunger.

The hunger to have him again, to have him want you again, to have him overwhelmed with every desire you represent, with the intensity burning to ash his own flesh, with the force to bind and grip you and trace the bruises on your softness, the need to taste your breath as he takes your mouth, as his lips and tongue fuck you with their kiss and your sweet and filthy little cunt weeps for his thick uncut hardness, cries to have him prise you open, to fill the void of your most intimate place, to mark you as his forever, to anoint you as his lover, his woman, his cockwhore, his queen.