I woke up alone again. My first thought.
You become used to people who are in your life for a while. Even if you don’t live there inside her bed, you get used to it. The sheets are different from yours and it smells like cinnamon and sweat and cum, but it gets good, it gets to feeling so good that you don’t ever want to leave. I mean, you get used to this, this feeling. This strength of character from holding her close and rubbing your skin against hers and knowing in your head that she’s closer to you now than when you first met her. When there was distance and unfamiliarity it was different than when you held her and whispered ‘you’re so fucking beautiful’ in her ear and felt your cock harden against her and felt her respond with a sort of hum that isn’t about singing a song.
My tears ducts are active. Next.
When neither of you wants to cook anything, not even eggs, and you wander her kitchen in search of something. You return with her parents’ hard-earned apples and you give her one. The walls are custard yellow and you eat that fucking apple. Wipe the apple dribble from your stubble and tell her to skip class, high school being useless as it is, you lie. You remain there and don’t consider that there is anything more than tracing fingers along the beauty of the stretch marks on her shoulders, her hips, her breasts, and playfully biting her with your fangs, telling her ‘I might break the skin’ because she doesn’t get off on the blood but she does get off on you.
I left the fan on. Something profound changed along the way. This humanity arrived later than expected.
In her long hair you see that the fundamental difference is about what is expected. It is all expected, and in the mole on her neck you see the what is wanted. In the mole there is only a spot of dark skin and you kiss it with your juiced lips to realize. The mole is neutral. She says ‘I am so tired of being here. I want so much more. I want to feel like I don’t need you to be my daddy.’ You hold her shoulder and say ‘if it makes you feel good.’ She says ‘I’m just a kid’ even when you assure her and see what you want to see when you tell her she is wise beyond years.
I no longer think ‘I don’t know’ with any sincerity. I think I know everything I want to know. No one will ever get rid of me unless I leave.
Her parents and sister won’t be home for a while yet and you blew off work. You rub your foot against hers. You lie next to her and rub your hand over her soft white belly. The blue veins of her arms guide you along a river of a river of a river and you don’t know that you’ll be somewhere else eventually because everything feels like the end of the world. It is all grand. ‘What will you name our first baby’ you say. ‘I don’t know yet’ she says. ‘Something pretty and Irish.’
I threw out all my coffee. I have some tea, no milk or sugar. That’s all I have.