It was painful to look at him. She could not place the feeling; it was not lust, precisely, or even desire. There was no coveting involved. Nor was he the paragon of beauty, though he possessed a comely enough face. No; the feeling was dull yet immense, pressing against her ribcage from the inside out, demanding release without direction, catharsis without cause. She thought she might suffocate with the weight of it, and wished she could leave him here, leave everything here and escape. But this caused her pain of a different sort, the sharper terror of leaving home, of cleaving the soul in half.

(image credit: tristan petel; https://www.flickr.com/photos/trxstan/)

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