saccharine. it is not sweetness, but the echo of it—too tender to be real, too persistent to forget. it is the aftertaste of joy pressed into grief, the smile stretched too tightly over a hollow ache. saccharine is a child who laughs over wilted flowers, the way sugar burns when held too long over flame. it is what remains when softness becomes survival, when sweetness is sharpened into something unbearable. that is the sadder version, i would say. and this is the sweeter version. i meet him beneath the carnival lights, and everything about him is saccharine—painfully, glittering so. his smile is spun sugar, delicate and dangerous, dissolving the moment i try to understand it. he calls me "angel" as though the word were dipped in honey, as though it had never been spoken before, and i almost believe him. almost. the music swells around us, syrupy and slow, violins weeping in theatrical devotion, and when he takes my hand his fingers are warm, too warm, like caramel about to burn. he tells me i am different. he tells me i shine. he tells me he has never felt this way. each phrase drips, golden and thick, pooling at my feet until i am standing in it, ankle-deep in sweetness that sticks and stains. it is delicious—oh, God, it is—but beneath it there is something sharp, something fermenting. sugar left too long in the sun sours. honey attracts flies. still, when he leans close, when his breath brushes my ear and he murmurs promises so sweet they make my teeth ache, i close my eyes and let it coat me whole. let me drown in it, i think. let me rot in this tenderness. because even false sweetness is sweetness still—and i have been starving.
