It was a dangerous relationship. Both for me and for him. Both, for different reasons.

For him, I was a dark and wellbred thing. A person who was delicate and wild, a juxtaposition, a paradox. A question without an answer and an ellipses when a period should do.

For me, he was a comma. A place to pause. There had been many commas. Many pauses. I had already met my exclamation point. My shout. My cry to love.

He was the pause.

I confess I didn't love the comma, who, in my self-loathing recklessness, I enthralled. I didn't mean to, to be fair. I did not set out to be the siren, him the Odysseus. He thought it cute, and curious, the part of myself that wanted to be damned.

I was swimming with sharks while he was safe on the sand.

I should have given him wax. Told his brothers to tie him to the mast.

Sang him a song that led him away from me.

The silly, dangerous, part for me was that he was only a comma, a pause, a mark on the page, a ,,,.

I didn't hate him. I tolerated him with well-regards. He was the passing of time. The fun to my reticent heart. I didn't need him, the comma, the pause. I wanted the exclamation point. HAD the exclamation point, at one time. And no other man could be that for me.

And, therein, lies the danger. The dangerous relationship. Hard pauses for me, and brackets for him. A moment in time. Moments in a sentence. Moments in life.

He thought himself a Heracles. I was Persephone, searching for my lost Hades.

I wanted the moon, he was only a shadow of it.

It is said, a writer should only write two exclamation points in their lifetime. How sad.

I’ve already had one.