Cruelty was never the point.
But it happened anyway.
It was never scripted. Just lived.

Instinctively, asymmetrically.
Unscored by safewords
or symmetry.

Where dominance wasn't roleplay
but a structure the other bled against.
And neither one called it love.

Because love would have demanded
less elegance, more responsibility.

And some part of us needed it to stay
as ritual, not reckoning.