In The Picture

I love the first picture that I ever saw of you. It was not one taken by me although there will be hundreds of those in due course. A multiplicity of snapshots which have been taken to show the world how wonderful you and me are together. Each one carefully configured on my part to send a message. See who I am now taking to your favourite restaurant? Look how we went to Rome when you always wanted to go? How about that? I have gone to the theatre when I told you I hated watching plays. See how we get on with my family? Go on, look at how happy she is making me, far more than you ever did. No, those pictures, whilst valuable to me and my machinations do not come close to how I marvel over that first picture of you.

Was it instead a picture you sent me? One of the hundreds I asked for, begged for and demanded? At first I wanted them to show to you how you were always in my mind ( thus ensuring I became a fixture in your mind). I also wanted those racier photographs that I persuaded you to take for me. Initially I used them for titillation although the real motive was to store them away and use them as a method of forceful coercion further down the line. You know me, always thinking of the next move. Later I requested you send me photos under the guise of wanting to look on your beauty when the reality was that I wanted to ensure you were where you said you were (you never really noticed how I asked for you to stand under the sign of the bars you went in or the name of the store you were shopping in or next to the friends you had told me you had gone to visit)

No, the first picture of you, the one I love the most is the one I first came upon when I searched for you online. It might have been your profile picture from an internet dating sight, your twitter banner picture or one you posted on Facebook. It could have been in the local press or a still from a youtube video. Either way, it was not one I had taken and it was not one that I had requested you take for me. I love that picture as I look on your engaging smile, the radiance emanating from it like solar flares from the sun, illuminating and bringing warmth all around you. Your skin is flawless and healthy, blooming with effervescence. Those long tresses of hair swinging to one side, or the bounce of your bob, or the neat rigidity of that fringe, all conveying that message of freedom and having been chosen by you. Your eyes shine, happiness exploding from them, the colour vibrant and elation searing from your gaze. I look on that picture that is burgeoning with potential, laden with possibility and exuding hope. You are a beacon of purity, decency and affection. Your caring nature cascades from that picture. You are that virgin empath, unsullied by my toxicity and untouched by my polluting influence.

Whenever I look on that first picture of you as the surge begins inside me and soars fast and fierce. I must have you. I remember again why I had to have you.

I see fresh prey.