And Tristan calls, next day me tired weary, working in the middle of the woods in 90 degree heat, children running screaming, needing this or that - oh, art camp, these kids are dumb as stumps, creative as the cheap manila paper we give them to draw on. He wants coffee, wants to talk about 'something.'
With thirty days under our belts of talking about our love and our time together and our need for each other, the irreplaceable moment of tenderness, irreplaceable feeling of understanding and knowing and accepting, I figure he needs to confront me with the shame, the sham that Shae has become, my awful guilt over not knowing but thinking so faking my way through our relationship.
But Tristan has met someone. "Kirsten," he says, and the name weighs like a thousand pounds of sorrow and concrete, ounces upon ounces of blood and salt water, years of time. He's happy. She makes him happy.
Says, "I expected you to slap me and walk out the door."
As if I ever could.
And driving, every black car resembles a hearse, all I see are dead souls spilling, pouring down the avenue. And I wonder, as I bawl - sob, like I haven't in at least a year - nearly crashing my own vehicle down Merrick Road, windy and full of yellow blazing motherfucking stoplights (I just want to get home, get drunk, sleep, forget) if these souls I see pouring from blackness into murky street-light-lit dark are just copies of my own, escaping, minuscule, parts of myself slipping into the velvet of the night.
"Tear the promise from my heart, tear my heart today."
Waits, leave me alone. Stop speaking my quiet, silent, ugly tired thoughts kept hidden in a deep recess of my brain. I can't take this bitch of a musician anymore, he knows too much.
The block of knives in my mother's kitchen is too tempting, too perfect to sit nearby. So I do, sit myself right next to it, and I draw one out. And I realize that not even three days before, I worried my scars would open themselves. The vapid and pointless anchor tattooed on my left forearm would do nothing to stop the habit, compulsion, NEED, I feel I've only just overcome.
I press that knife down, feel the bite but keep it steady, I don't know how much I need this yet. After almost a 10 year period, decade, most of my life, the demon I fought so hard to overcome, banish deep into the depths of my souls, is baring his teeth at me in the nastiest smile I've seen.
With thirty days under our belts of talking about our love and our time together and our need for each other, the irreplaceable moment of tenderness, irreplaceable feeling of understanding and knowing and accepting, I figure he needs to confront me with the shame, the sham that Shae has become, my awful guilt over not knowing but thinking so faking my way through our relationship.
But Tristan has met someone. "Kirsten," he says, and the name weighs like a thousand pounds of sorrow and concrete, ounces upon ounces of blood and salt water, years of time. He's happy. She makes him happy.
Says, "I expected you to slap me and walk out the door."
As if I ever could.
And driving, every black car resembles a hearse, all I see are dead souls spilling, pouring down the avenue. And I wonder, as I bawl - sob, like I haven't in at least a year - nearly crashing my own vehicle down Merrick Road, windy and full of yellow blazing motherfucking stoplights (I just want to get home, get drunk, sleep, forget) if these souls I see pouring from blackness into murky street-light-lit dark are just copies of my own, escaping, minuscule, parts of myself slipping into the velvet of the night.
"Tear the promise from my heart, tear my heart today."
Waits, leave me alone. Stop speaking my quiet, silent, ugly tired thoughts kept hidden in a deep recess of my brain. I can't take this bitch of a musician anymore, he knows too much.
The block of knives in my mother's kitchen is too tempting, too perfect to sit nearby. So I do, sit myself right next to it, and I draw one out. And I realize that not even three days before, I worried my scars would open themselves. The vapid and pointless anchor tattooed on my left forearm would do nothing to stop the habit, compulsion, NEED, I feel I've only just overcome.
I press that knife down, feel the bite but keep it steady, I don't know how much I need this yet. After almost a 10 year period, decade, most of my life, the demon I fought so hard to overcome, banish deep into the depths of my souls, is baring his teeth at me in the nastiest smile I've seen.
