FIRST: the backstabbers. "trust is so easily broken."
// her eyes are not windows to the soul, but to the galaxy. her skin, when examined with care, holds twelve million maps of stars, all lightyears away. the isoceles triangle of freckles on the hip bone are you. the delicate scars on the inner wrist are her.
// "i will find you," you tell her, one among other promises whispered to her skin that you have no way to keep. you memorize the outer scars of her inner soul. "***** gravity."

SECOND: the victims. "give until there's nothing left."
// she ***** you dry. she is no vampire. no, not a vampire; a succubus does not feed on something as mundane as blood. every time you fall in love with her, she digs her fingernails into your skin and drains it right out of you. and you can't help but fall in love again, and again, and again, until you are a withered husk of a being. you are someone who died too many times and no amount of electric lust can save you now.

THIRD: the soulmates. "you love too deeply. it will destroy you."**
// you hurt each other, yes, but no one else has the antidote to this particular poison, and that's okay. he completes you, and you him. seventeen times he's told you he loves you and you match him for each one. your love for him cannot outpace his for you, nor vice versa.
// then there is an accident, a hospital room, a marble stone with an epitaph that's not right, and you crumble under the weight of all that love.