Perchance To Sleep

When I am first with you, I like to sit and look at you as you sleep. I like to see you lying there content, your arm draped across me as if checking that I am still there next to you. Your eyes are closed and your face is in a relaxed repose as I feel your chest gently rising against me.

You look content, safe and loved. I wonder what you are dreaming about as a small smile plays about your lips. I often believe that it is me. The wonderful, incessant and perfect love that I furnish for you throughout your waking hours must surely continue when you are asleep. It must bleed into your sleep, percolate into your dreams and such is its all-pervasive power it makes you feel loved even when you are asleep. It is during these moments that I consider how I can continue to give you this perfect love that you rightly deserve.

I can see what a good and decent person that you are. I feel the admiring love that you pour over me and I know it is genuine, I can tell a fraud at a hundred paces and you are no such thing. It is entirely understandable that you flow with this love for me, who would not when faced with being the object of my perfect love? I look down at you, your delicate features framed in the low lamp light that I have kept on in the bedroom solely for this purpose.

You seem so fragile and vulnerable as you lie there, unaware that I am watching over you. I want to protect you; I want to shield you from the darkness that is out there and keep you safe. You deserve nothing less because you give me such a wonderful love in return and I must protect you. I must ensure that my investment remains cherished and loved. It is during these moments as I sit and look at you that I know I must truly love you. How can I not when I feel such a sense of responsibility over your well-being. Look at you; still, perfect and oblivious.

Who could not fail to love someone like you? Who could not fail to have such a care for your well-being? Who could ever cause that beautiful face to frown and crease in bewildered pain? Who could cause a solitary tear to trickle from your eyes and spill down those flawless cheeks? I cannot bear to think about you being hurt, feeling sad and in pain. I feel a deep-seated desire to look after you, to keep the darkness from your door and ensure that you are always only ever happy and loved.

This sense of being your guardian is strong. I feel anger at the thought of anybody lashing out and wounding you, someone causing this perfect creature to feel anguish, pain and concern. I lay a hand on your shoulder and you shift slightly in your sleep acknowledging this gentle gesture of protection. You face nudges against me as if you know what I am thinking and you feel safe and wanted.

Yet for all these thoughts I know that this is purely the way I am expected to think about you. This is how I should act in order to maintain the façade of our relationship so that you continue to give me what I want. I sit and wrestle with these thoughts. Are they genuine? Are they what I truly feel about you yet I know I do not. I know that the apparent abhorrence that I manufacture at the thought of you being hurt is purely an artifice because it will be me that eventually causes your hurt.

It will be me that will twist that beautiful smile into a gash of despair. It will be me that makes that light voice become wracked with anxiety and pain. It will be my words that wound and my actions that scar. For all the tenderness that I apparently exhibit as I sit here now looking over you, I know, as sure as the world keeps turning and that the sun rises in the east, that I will be the one that will bring you to your knees. I will have you feeling exhausted, crazed and desperate and as I sit and recognise that I am the architect of your downfall I feel nothing. I feel no guilt, no despair or remorse because those things have been stripped from me.

I was never made to experience those sensations and that is why I know I will do as I do to you, as I have to all the others before me and I will only feel one thing; power. That raw and visceral power which I must have. I am blessed with sufficient insight and intellect to know that what I do is wrong. I can see the tears in your eyes, hear your begging and see your hunched broken frame which tells me that you are hurting and I caused this.

Yet for all of this understanding I am unwilling and unable to do anything about it because I am not forged with the desire or the tools to do so. This is what I am and better you remain asleep, oblivious to what is really looking down on you.