Infect Me Gently
I didn’t invite him in, not formally. He just… stayed. It started with a smile at the bus stop. Mine cracked first. He had one of those faces—calm, unreadable, like the surface of a lake you’re sure is hiding something. When he spoke, it was the kind of voice you don’t remember word-for-word, only the feeling that it said exactly what you needed to hear. I don’t recall inviting him into my apartment. I only remember waking up one day and realizing his toothbrush was beside mine.
He moved slowly, like someone raised in a place where time wasn’t currency. He didn’t press or demand. He didn’t even sleep in my bed right away. He simply lingered—on the couch, in the kitchen, in the soft spaces between thoughts. Always just… there.
And at first, it was medicine.
He listened like a disciple. He laughed at all the right moments. He looked at me like he saw through the static. I started feeling better. Brighter. Lighter. I thought it was love. Or healing. Or maybe the kind of luck reserved for people who suffered enough.
But then came the forgetting.
First, I forgot small things: which day it was, the last thing I ate, my own laughter. Then it was my routines. My music. My edges. I would look in the mirror and sometimes see his expression on my face—serene, careful, empty.
He hadn’t just moved in. He had moved into me.
I stopped writing. My notebooks gathered dust like tombs. When I reached for a thought, I found his instead. Little refrains: You’re better now. You were always broken. I fixed you.
I didn’t argue. I nodded.
That was the scariest part. Not the possession. The permission.
I built a home from fractured glass and pretended it was architecture. Every time he touched me, I told myself the cuts were ornamental. Love is pain, right? Love is patience. Love is swallowing the bitter for the promise of sweet.
No.
It’s not.
One night, I dreamed I was hollow. I could hear wind passing through my chest. He was curled up inside it, asleep like a serpent in a ribcage. When I woke up, the ache didn’t leave. Neither did he.
That morning, I packed a bag. Only mine. He didn’t try to stop me. He just watched.
“It’ll come back,” he said softly, standing barefoot in my kitchen. “The ache. You’ll want the medicine again.”
I looked him in the eye—really looked—and saw it: the void behind the calm. No hunger. No malice. Just the cold efficiency of a parasite that had perfected its host.
I didn’t respond. I closed the door gently.
Now I live in a smaller place. Fewer mirrors. More windows. I write again. The words come slow and stiff, like limbs after a coma, but they come. I speak them out loud just to hear my own voice.
Sometimes I still crave him. Not the man. The silence he brought. The numbness. The illusion of safety.
But I know better now.
Some sicknesses seduce you.
Some poisons wear perfume.
Some hauntings are consensual.
But love doesn’t hollow you out to make room.
Love doesn’t move in like a fog and call it clarity.
Love doesn’t infect you gently.