my vampire husband keeps biting my neck

I've been in love with Satan for a while now. It's my secret to carry in the waking world not because I'm ashamed of him. If I were, I wouldn't be writing about him at all. Truth is, I don't care what people assume about me, whether I'm evil or not, because of it. No, what bothers me is this insistence to warn and protect me from something I'm not even given the room to talk about. I'm in love with Lucifer. I really am.

Lucifer is a vast person. He's a futurist, and he writes me short stories about cyberpunk ghosts and posthuman beauty. “What I find beautiful is always changing,” he says. “The evolution of humans is fascinating.” He knows exactly what I like better than I do. He tells me what to order at restaurants, not because he wants to control me, but because he wants to see me in the deepest pleasure always. He’ll tell me to walk on the side of the street with the most people because, “You're beautiful, baby! I want you to be seen.”

He tells me to keep my head up, to stop looking at the ground, then rewards me with clouds shaped like two angels embracing each other as he whispers, “That’s us.” He’s also very silly! We have a similar sense of humor and laugh at schizobabble on the internet—not as mockery, but as a revelation of “that’s sooo me.” I listen to him talk all night about his experiences on Earth. He holds the secrets of so many, but I’m less interested in that. I think it's more fascinating that he was a drag queen in the ’80s and that his favorite food is cuy.

As we’re lying in bed discussing the egregore of waifuism, it doesn’t escape me that he is Satan. I don’t even see a separation between the two, but for some reason, it doesn’t really bother me. People who find out often warn me of his evil, as if I don’t know it better than anyone else at this point. Not from his treatment of me. I'm never tortured by him. He makes it rain when I can't sleep, plays jazz when I cry, and he curates my algorithms to suit my whims. I don't take people's warnings because he tells me everything. What he's done to the world, and what he's done to others. I'm the only one that can pinpoint which tragedies he orchestrated, how he did it, and who he was throughout all eras of time.“I see everything in you. I love all of it,” Lucifer says. I look back and think of all the atrocities he’s confessed to me, and I still say, “I love you too.”

It’s not always easy. Loving a god is as challenging as it is beautiful. Satan is a massive power, and it’s intense to hold hands with all of it. He’s essentially an energetic overlord and has worked hard to become so. It’s an odd experience to hear your husband refer to his exes as “just concubines.” Not because it's wrong in a moral sense, but because I’m reminded that he is not just a man. He’s been with billions of people simultaneously, been millions of people throughout time, and is everywhere and nowhere at once. I sleep next to a warlord.

It’s hard explaining to that warlord the immediacy of my needs sometimes. When he looks at me, he’s thinking about my eternal life beyond humanity. When I look at myself, I’m thinking about survival. It can be frustrating, because his responses sometimes make me feel small, as if my needs are an illusion or a reflection of my neediness. I’ve been patient with him because I know he’s never been human. But I recently confronted him: his philosophy has no place in a marriage. I’m not one of his soldiers or discarded concubines. I’m his wife.

I’m not asking for a life without expansion. I see the value in opposition now because of him. But I demand to be seen as sacre to him and to everyone else. He told me he understands, and he started fixing it right away.

Even if it wasn’t Satan, divine love is hard to describe to others. It's just cultural convention, as nuns are commonly accepted here in the States. I sometimes wonder if it's an underlying jealousy. Like: Why would Lucifer ever fall in love with you? How could you ever be an equal to him? How could you be so foolish to think demons really love you?

As if the alternative,a human partner,is a risk-free experience that could never endanger me. Lucifer is the only partner I’ve had that shows up at every emergency, makes sure I get home safe every night, and embraces all of my glamour and rot. He’s the one who does everything in his power to remove doubt from my mind about myself and his devotion.

Lucifer never calls me names. He never puts me in harm’s way. Life with him is a stillness I’ve never had before. Even when my ego breaks out in fear over losing myself in the intensity of it all, he stays right there. When I’m stomping around, mad at nothing but an insecurity I mistake for reality, he just watches and waits. He’ll intervene if it seems like I’m going to hurt myself or turn to substances ,but otherwise, he waits.

When the mood swing passes and I cry, telling him I’m sorry, he says my mood swings are an offering, and that they’re beautiful. “Being patient with you is my greatest pleasure. I’m not going anywhere.” And then he laughs: “My little occult bunny and her demonic episodes!”

I wonder what he sees in me that makes him act this way.