before the pub crawl

and things had been going so well.

the sister talk, the stress and silence. you'll be coming by soon to close the door again.

will it be somehow, despite the late hour, before the evening's revelry? you, distant and resolute that tonight will be one for self-destruction, and i, numb, shattered.

or will it be tomorrow or in the coming days, a dispassionate litany of wrongs done spilling forth from your empty-eyed mask and the thought that he won't be coming back. no one could love me through this.

i think you have it within you to rally, shrug off the ink-black tendrils of thought driving you to seek emptiness at any cost, to stand firm and choose beautiful things. just not for me.

I cannot continue being a source of comfort to you while you self destruct. You owe me nothing; no obligation, no guilt, no apologies.

I adore you, utterly. I want nothing more than to be around you, and I hope you will find it within you to believe that you are truly forgiven for whatever you have done that has caused me pain.

I don't know what has happened in your life to leave you feeling worthless and deserving only of objectification and abuse, but I know that in order to have any chance at finding happiness you must stop working to confirm those self-negating feelings.

I don't expect you to change anything on my account; if you want to harm yourself I certainly cannot stop you, but it will not help you to see yourself hurting me.

This is not a condemnation, a judgment, or a rejection of you. I know you have issues. I accept them, and will support you wholeheartedly as you try to overcome them, but I cannot care as I do and stand by knowing that you're instead trying to make things worse. Neither can I stop caring.

what i'd give for a kiss on your cheek.

Monday morning. Usually by this time we'd be tangled up in one another, drowsily racing for off switches and snooze buttons so as to better preserve our precious cozy time together. Sometimes you'd stay in bed longer, gorgeous and warm beneath the duvet, all curled up. Mornings like that, it hurt me to leave. It tugged at my heartstrings, every time, looking back at you from the doorway on my way to work - already looking forward to seeing you again Thursday.

Today I woke with my arms around a stuffed monkey, still, silent, tear-damp.

I miss you so much.

ending your day by the side of the road

We drove, talking. I don't know where we were, or where we were headed. It seemed that the drive was itself the purpose of the outing. It's always impressive to see you drive, sliding smoothly from gap to gap, making the whole exercise look laughably easy. I admired the trust you placed in your car, trust born of an intimate understanding of that machine's capabilities. Your talent was undeniable.

I don't remember what I did - I may have made a joke, perhaps simply brushed an affectionate fingertip across your earlobe. You looked my way, smiling broadly, clearly happy. My smile met your own as we enjoyed a shared, simple, private moment.

Someone may have pulled out in front of us, or possibly a fellow traveler along our road stopped short before us. Whatever the cause, you missed the cue - you held my eyes, rich with adoration for you, until too late. The brakes squealed terribly for a time that seemed without end, until they were cut off by the sickening crunch of two vehicles mating at seventy plus, and then darkness.

The world faded back to me slowly, revealing utter chaos. The lights, the sounds, all more or less indistinguishable in my shaken mind. I turned to you and saw that you were gone.

I woke once more to a feeling of dread, wondering. I thought of calling, but saw the danger there - my foolish and sudden need for reassurance must take a back seat to your gambit for happiness, of course. Still, it chilled me knowing that if something dreadful happened to you, there'd be no call to let me know. I'd never find out, and thus I will always wonder.

Life After Mono

It's a cold, wrenching pain in my gut that warms as it rises, finally pouring warm and relentless from sleep-gummed eyes not quite blinking back the frosty light of the new day. This is how I wake up, now. This is my new morning.

I want nothing more than to talk to you, to listen to you, to sit silent with you. My own grief is fierce and warns of nothing before it strikes. The minute-to-minute misery, the beast sitting atop me proud and immovable to steal my breath, my enthusiasm, my appetite, this is not the sting of my own loss but the shade of your own.

Knowing you hurt and can't turn to me fills me with slow, syrupy shame.

I did nothing I know of to warrant the disapproval of your friends and family which has caused so much stress for you, with their judgmental 'worry.' It is easy for them to speak out of turn, who have been all their lives pampered and know nothing of the crevasses, who have spent no time in life's deep, dark places. It is easy for them to worry of wrong directions who have never stepped for a moment from the safe, well-swept path laid out for them.

It is easy for them to fear I might drag you there, into that vast space of endless night. It seems so reasonable to suggest that the way to save yourself is to push me away, to push away this reckless and self-destructive influence, malicious, manipulative, tainted by the gloom of those caverns. All they see is that I've been in that hole before. It matters nothing that I know the way out.