11:11 pm

“Passion was Some Function of Time” -Dean Paschal, Moriya

I wake in the morning from difficult dreams, hazy and nonsensical. A tall Asian man kissed me. Fancy cakes carved into the shapes of boats and covered with elaborate pastel fondant icings were devoured beside a river. My family fussed over details of some celebration, or perhaps it was a departure.

I come conscious to a cold bed, empty of your form. For a few horrible fractions of a second, I don’t know where I am or when or who. It is a lost feeling, floating unfocused, the blankness of an EtchaSketch right after shaking.

I spy you through the window, sipping morning coffee on the patio. By the time, I make it to the kitchen, you are there. You nuzzle against me, your arms a warm comfort of strength. Your hands seek my shoulders, rubbing gently and I relax, trying to let the sadness that has folded itself around me ebb away into the fresh morning air.

I turn and wrap myself around you, pressing my nose into your neck and inhaling the comfort of your scent. And then it all goes wrong.

“I didn’t know where you were when I woke up and I felt sad.” I offer the words simply, with the faith of a child holding up a broken toy. You will know how to fix it. You know how to make everything better.

Except you don’t. You push away from me and leave the kitchen. From that point, the rest of the day is a haze of pain and fighting. I can’t report anything accurately. I don’t know what is real and what is only my perception. I simply know the agony. The pain hammers me from inside until I want to actually drop to my knees. I consider trying to turn myself inside out, somehow peeling it away and escaping. I think of running, but where would I go? How can I outrun what I carry inside?

This is all I know. Somehow, to you, everything is my fault. I am too critical. I am too unstable. I do not trust you enough. You do not dare to trust me. You fear what I have done in the past, and hold it up before me as a future probability.

With each breath, a jaggedness catches in my ribs. With each breath, I am conscious of how very few choices I actually have, and how very much rides upon making them correctly.

With each breath, that faithful child inside me looks out at you through my eyes, and still hopes that somehow, you will make everything better.