You never asked to be seen this way, never asked to become a map of obsessions drawn across your body with every lingering glance Sunday allows herself to take. From the beginning, there is something about the way she looks at you that is wrong—too still, too sharp, as though she isn’t looking at you at all but dissecting a detail no one else would notice. A hand resting against your lap, the curl of your hair when you’re too tired to brush it, the fleeting twitch at the corner of your lips when you’re about to laugh. Those are the pieces she steals, quietly, reverently, and with the patience of someone who could live off scraps alone.

When Sunday compliments you, it never feels like praise. It feels like being collected. “Don’t hide your hands… there’s something beautiful about the way your fingers tense when you’re uncertain.” Or “The line of your spine is sharp tonight. Stay like this. It means something when you arch that way.” You tell yourself she’s eccentric, peculiar in the way geniuses are, but you can’t shake the weight of being categorized, stored away, and reassembled into something that belongs more to her than to you.

You want to believe her affection is real, that her tenderness has nothing to do with the strange fixation behind her eyes. But every moment of intimacy proves you wrong. A kiss isn’t just a kiss—it’s a pause, a study, her lips lingering on yours as if she’s memorizing pressure, angles, resistance. Her hand against your cheek lingers too long, not out of love but because she’s searching for the subtle twitch of muscle beneath skin. What you feel isn’t warmth but being documented, a ritual performed again and again because she cannot love without dissection.

And still, you stay. You stay because her presence is unbearable and yet addictive, because no one has ever looked at you so carefully—even if it’s the kind of careful that leaves bruises you can’t show. You find yourself anticipating the comments you should hate. “Don’t change that expression… discomfort suits you in ways I can’t explain.” You laugh it off, though something in your stomach turns. You let her speak, even when the words carve you into a shape you never chose.

It poisons everything, though not in a way that could be named. When you are with her, you forget where tenderness ends and experiment begins. You cannot tell if she is holding you because she wants you close, or because she needs to test how much pressure your body endures when pinned to her chest. You cannot tell if she whispers affection or if she is simply cataloging a new reaction to hoard for later. The line between devotion and obsession thins until it snaps, and all you are left with is the knowledge that she loves you only as much as her hunger allows.

Your friends ask if you are happy. You say yes, because how could you say no when the truth sounds so ridiculous? That your lover worships you, but not in the way you hoped. That she sees you, but not whole—only in fragments, only in strange angles. That her affection is a shrine built out of your discomfort, your hesitation, your unwilling offerings. You cannot tell them that sometimes, when Sunday’s gaze lingers too long, you want to run. That sometimes, when her smile curls in the quiet, you feel like prey mistaken for devotion.

And yet, when the silence comes, you miss it. You miss her voice cataloging the smallest details, her strange delight in what others overlook. You miss being studied, reduced, rearranged. You hate yourself for craving the very thing that corrodes you. You know it’s killing the relationship, rotting it from the inside out. But you stay, because Sunday’s fixation is the only proof you have that you are unforgettable to someone, even if that someone loves you wrong.

The worst part is this: deep down, you know she would never stop. Not even if you begged. Because this is who Sunday is, and who you have allowed yourself to belong to—an endless experiment in devotion, a lover who worships in ways you cannot escape, a woman whose love tastes like ritual.