Two Eyes Down: Nearsighted

Pills

I wake up next to her like a corpse would. Despite the bare skin on bare skin contact, I feel cold against Demi. It's so hard to move the thin sheets I'm entangled in. Every limb cracks as I do so, removing an angel from my waist takes ten, twenty, a thousand times the effort it should. Even thereafter, I still must muster the strength to shuffle my way to the bathroom. My face haunts like a ghost in the mirror as I stare back at the transparent figure before me. She watches my shaking hand as I bring the pills to my mouth and knock them back with a jittering glass of water. As much as I can get anyway.

I always found it peculiar how humans -each of the six billion and seven hundred million that reside on earth- keep going through the same motions that hurt more than help. Medical or not, to feel something or nothing at all, friend or foe, this thing that is continuously violating them in the most discreet -and maybe even beautiful- of ways is welcomed again and again without as much as a cry of resistance. Drugs, people, in some ways they are one in the same. If there was such thing as a good heroine, it's currently passed out and topless in my bed. That's on what ifs though. Good heroine doesn't exist, and that woman over there is far more powerful and addictive.

It's three am. I am tired but not surprised my eyes are open at this hour. I almost always wake up early now. Once I'm up I'm up, that's final until further notice. Even the syrups that taste like liquid cough drops can't knock out this sleepless soul. I'm too drugged for anything to really make an impact anyway. The medication seduces me to what feels like nothing. I'm just drifting through life, one pointless step at a time. It's so hard to show the love I have for anything these days. Bye these days I mean the last three weeks. These days feel like months though. Time passes sluggishly when boredom reigns, even when it's just for a short time. In order to keep my hallucinations and wig outs from PTSD at bay, I have to cut all imagination and almost all raw emotion entirely. Demi insists I try something else, something less draining. Something that doesn't require her to say my name three times to get me out of a purple haze. Once upon a time she could whisper and I'd come running through fire and storm to hear her so much as breathe again. I still would if I could, but the rain freezes my bones and the smoke burns my eyes. Even if I tried, I wouldn't get very far.

I exit the bathroom as quietly as I can, slipping one of Demi's hoodies off the floor and enveloping myself in her on the way out of my room and into the kitchen. I make some tea and situate myself on the little bench hanging by the porch ceiling out front. Crickets tell each other their stories as the moon and dull stars listen intensely. The steam of my cup seems to be something they would understand.

I hear her before she speaks, but I don't mind her standing on the threshold, burning holes in the back of my head with her gaze. I can picture her now, sleep in the creases of her eyes, a slight frown surrounded by a Milky Way of freckles and a galaxy of smooth olive skin, a loose shirt and tiny shorts doing nothing to shelter her from the elements. While she looks flawless, the moonlight putting a sparkle in her eyes like the one she had before this mess. She's as black as the ink on her skin right now. It may be sadness, it may be depression, but it's also elegance. All colors can mean so many different things.m. "It's cold up there without you".

"Just wasn't feeling sleep tonight, that's all. It is cold though", I agree, still looking out in the distance for what never comes.

"You promised me you'd switch meds".

"I did indeed, but I never promised a date or time in which I would".

Demi's quiet feet patter against the wood beneath them until she's next to me. I look up to an exhausted woman who's tits are only sheltered by my favorite fugly but fuzzy plaid blanket. I've been mistaken, no t-shirt. Same woman underneath though, in the end it's just a decoration. "Mind if I sit"? I shake my head, and she slowly lowers herself to situate against me. I wrap a free arm over her shoulders and massage it soothingly. "It's beautiful out tonight".