The Mattress Still Has Your Body On It And I'm Not Sure Why

Wet Hair Is Only Pretty When It's Water And Not Grease

She's obsessive compulsive, twisting her wrist around until it feels just right, touching table tops fifty times exactly. So when she comes knocking, I'm not surprised it happens in odd increments. (One, two, one, two, three, seven)

One

I take my time on my way to the door, I want her to agonize, consider me, losing me, feel the world crumble. Feel it, feel it, feel it, feel, feel, feel.

Love it here, love it here more than anything, never leave again.

I want to climb into her skin and eat her heart, rub myself on her kidneys, drink the alcohol from her liver, travel into her womb, see what we've destroyed, stand proudly, handcuffed together, watching it fall.

Having children was our dream, in a land far away, a land of itchy carpets and bad alcohol and teenage love that wasn't quite love because it was intense and harsh and rough. We were stupid, thinking like we did. Having a house and a nice backyard and a good job and nice neighbors and a pretty garden wasn't for people like us. We're bound to the walls of old motels and pocket mirrors, chained with red ropes and bloody fingertips.

Two

Maybe I won't even open the door, (I know this is a lie, a blatant lie to myself, I love her in a somber, sick way.) Leaving her and her drugs and her cigarettes and her empty wallet on the stained pavement to die, to beg and to plead and to sob. I don't want her to pretend she understands, I don't want her to make me sick anymore, but I'm chained to her just as much as she is chained to me.

I think about what I'll see when I open the door. There have been times when she was dressed up - silver dress and red lipstick, hair tied in elaborate twists and turns. Times when she was bleeding, beaten, shades of orange and blue: a sunset. Times when she was so high she could only speak in fragmented sentences, stutters. Times when she was "a changed woman," finding some religious group downtown and only leaving when they drained her of all her money.

One

I think about pavement and windows and the shadows windows make when the sun hits them just right. And then I think about how amazing it is that people can think and how amazing it is we can think fast enough to write a thesis in our minds on our way to open doors and greet broken girlfriends that bleed on pavement and steal candy from convenience stores.

Two

"Guess who?" 

I can feel her hands covering my eyes, she feels out my exhaustion through the tips of her fingertips. It's silly, really, how happy we are like this, so excited for dumb surprises, a bad painting, a chair she found, a pretty one, laying out for the garbage collectors.

Placing my index to my chin, faux thoughtfulness.

She laughs. She laughs freely, an innocence so pure, a song only interrupted when she opens her eyes, seeing her thin wrists and sweaty palms. Her head tilted backwards at a joke that isn't even funny, clasped hands, blush on her cheeks. While her world crumbles around her, her laughter is kept far away from the rumbles of agony, protected, encased. Safe.

Three

She takes her hands off my eyes, we're in a park somewhere, far from her house. (She didn't want to run into anyone.)
I can feel her smile from behind me, rushing in front of me, trying to time herself with the opening of my eyes. Shifting, left, right, left, right, excitement, love, (or something like that.)

The light blinds me for a moment, but when the fog clears, I see her standing in front of me, nearly squealing. Holding out a bouquet of flowers, all of them hand picked, almost dying, stuffed in a vase she found in her kitchen. Gold, I see gold. Thorns and gold, thorns and gold.
For some reason, the wilted ends were endearing, they looked a bit like us, trying really hard to stay upright, but getting caught in the rot somehow anyway.

"I found them, in our forest, thought you'd like them." I can feel her smile, sense it from miles away.

She continues, not letting me say anything, not yet, "I spent a while picking them, you know how flowers die, quick like that, so they're a little droopy, but I thought- I don't even know! I don't even know why I gave you these but I love them so much, I just hoped you would love them too and you would keep them on your bedside table and think of me before you went to bed like we were in a movie or something." She's laughing again, rolling over into herself, stomach twirling, she is free. Her hair is long, longer than I remember, floating up in the bed of early spring wind. And I'm laughing too, because suddenly I'm light and happy and even though laughing hurts because it tugs at my face muscles and makes me want to peel my skin, she makes me laugh and I love to be made laugh by her and that's what I want, really, really bad.

Seven

One, two, one, two, seven, one two, one, seven. She's forgetting her three's, her purples and her pinks and her yellows and her blues falling apart on the concrete and pooling together and slipping in the crack in the door in a murky black, reaching my feet.
Stepping over puddles, I don't see any gold.
I open the door, letting the light of autumn afternoon sink onto closed curtains and dirty dishes.

She's there, in a way I haven't quite seen her before.