A short story based on the song “It will Come Back” by Hozier

She knew better. She treated it with a kindness that it never deserved. She fed it by hand and offered a home when she should have left it alone, left it to the land. Now this beast keeps coming up to our door, scratching and pawing and howling for a love they became addicted to. But the love is lost and strewn about. This creature is never satisfied anymore, and yet it returns every night demanding more. I thought she knew better than to give it a soul that displaces. The land was cruel but it’s what this creature knows. 

I thought she knew better. She gave me a kindness that was filled with falsehoods. Her smile made me relax and she held me with a trust that I never knew before now. But she had no intention to keep me. It is so easy to need her, to crave her. I thought she knew better than to let me in when she never wanted to keep me. I scour through the cold to find her warmth. Days are never filling without her by my side. And yet, even as I lay beside her it feels cold and desolate. Blue from the cold and textured with a dryness, but she remains beautiful all the same. If only she never showed me a mercy she could not sustain.

She should have known better. I sit outside of the door every night. I yearn and howl for a love I have never felt before, but one that I cannot get out of my head. She never understood. You cannot let it in without an intention to keep it. You never understood, babe. You cannot be kind, because I will come back.