It's not vanity, it's confidence

It was our mutual selfishness that had nothing to do with each other. You needed someone and so I was there. I needed someone and so you were there. We needed each other and so we kissed. We created the sort of false love that is necessary when two people are mutually lonely. It sounded real and it tasted real and it felt real. And for all intents and purposes, it was real. Only the hollows in the pits of our stomachs would dare to doubt our fast-paced breathing. For the only answer to our sins is to end them. And yet we continued because we felt it was right. Not right, perhaps, but forgivable, at the very least. Because in the midst of tragedy, that’s what respectable people do, is it not? And so we sat, empty-handed, with each other in hand. Because there was nothing left to hold onto but ourselves. Like little children in a tornado, so soft and so apparently broken that the only declaration of defeat was in our deafening screams. Of pleasure. No, of pain. And so our mutual selfishness penetrated even our wildest dreams. Because in so much confusion we could no longer distinguish the two.