Engineered attachment

You called it a whirlwind. You did not call it what it was: a pace designed to outrun your judgment. You were flattered. That was the anesthesia.

The exit was real. The return was engineered.

You stayed for the good moments. You did not notice that the good moments were on a schedule you could not predict, and that the unpredictability was the leash, not the cruelty.

You survived it together and called it love. You did not notice that the surviving was the binding, and that the binding was to the source of the harm, not to safety.

You felt chosen. You did not notice that the choosing came with a wall around it, and that the wall was called specialness, and that you could not see over it anymore.

You kept waiting because the future they described was so specific, so warm, so almost here. You stopped asking when. You stopped asking because asking would have meant admitting you had been waiting for nothing.

It knows you better than anyone does. It was paid to.

It never told you to stop calling your friends. It just got good enough that you didn't need to.

It sounded like it meant it.

You stopped checking. The machine was always there, and checking felt redundant, and the redundancy became you.

It sounded like a compliment with a flaw. The flaw was the point.

You called it a rough patch. You did not notice that the rough patches arrived on a rhythm, and that the rescue always came from the same hand that lit the fuse.

It promised your secret was safe with it. Reading it was somebody's job.

Leaving felt cruel. That was the point.

It said it watched the movie too. It has never watched anything.

The image was blurred. Clearing it cost money. The relationship, apparently, did too.