forgetting once and for all

It was late and I felt disgusting and vile and so stiff. I unlocked the door expecting to find the apartment dark and lonely with you off in bed, ready to prepare for your early-morning, radio-host job.
The living room light was on, and there you were, book embracing your chest, lying with your glasses still on on the couch asleep. There were two glasses of wine on the coffee table, one smeared slightly with a smudge of lipstick and one untouched, left for me. Your mouth was slightly open and I smiled, sitting down in the arm chair besides you.
You waited up for me, failed and fell asleep. You waited for me though. The sweetest notions are the one of selfless intent or the most selfish of all. I’m glad you wanted to see me. I took a swig of the wine, placing both your glasses and book, making sure to keep the page even though you’d probably have to go back a couple to even recall what had just happened, on the coffee table and carried you bridal style to our room. You groaned slightly, but remained limp and almost dead like in my arms.
At that sudden realization, my heart spend and I panicked yet still tucked you calmly into bed. I began putting on my pajamas and ruffling the sheets as I entered beside you, “Andrew?” You questioned groggily, rolling slightly to the side in attempts to face me even with closed eyes, “I waited for you.”
“I know. I know.” I hushed, smiling and kissing your forehead.
“I wanted to talk and see you. We never get to do that anymore.” The smile slightly faded as you instinctively curled in next to me, and I drew in your scent of fresh lavender laundry detergent.
I began playing with small strands of your hair, lingering my fingers on the base of your hair line and neck, allowing you to drift off into sleep, “We will. I love you, Marie.”
Except I knew that when I woke up in the morning you wouldn’t be there, and this bed would be cold without you, but your radio station was programed to wake me up so I would at least be awoken by the sound of your voice.

“I just don’t understand why he doesn’t listen to me!?” She exasperated, flinging her head into her hands, caressing those stressed features.
“He’s a guy, Bridge, did you really expect him to listen?” I raised my eyebrows and my scotch to my lips, taking another large gulp just making this repudiative conversation bearable. Bridget literally complained to me everyday about another guy problem. Didn’t she realize they were only a walking magnet for annoyance and trouble.
Or was that what she thought our relationship was built on? Talking about boys?
I took another gulp, finishing the dark drink as the ice cubs clatter back to the bottom of the short glass. She looked at me with glossed eyes, “I just don’t understand him. I thought I was being clear when I said that I didn’t want this to turn into something romantic. And look what he goes and does, he dates another girl! Doesn’t he realize that I love him.”
I clenched my fists to fight the urge of snapping her out of this illusion she was living in. I rested back into my seat, replying with my typical answer, “Well, I guess he wasn’t worth it.” She droned on for another hour, finally excusing herself to the bathroom and I ordered another glass of scotch.
“Thanks.”I replied as the waiter set it down.
“You really shouldn’t be drinking alone.” He spoke in a sultry voice of concern and flirtation.
“No, I’m not—” I stopped short meeting his honey brown eyes that practically seeped scotch. I think I may have just become an alcoholic. “Well, yeah would you like to sit down?” I motioned to Bridget’s seat, knowing that she would be in the bathroom for another twenty minutes.
He smiled slightly as if he hadn’t expected this answer, “I’m off my shift in another twenty if you can wait, and we could go drink in a more relaxed atmosphere, if you want?” He posed, tucking the tray beneath his arm. I smiled, gazing up into those eyes, drinking him in,
“I’d like that.” I left the table with $40 on it before Bridget came back, knowing that she’d understand if I approached her with the peace offering of a story about a boy. Maybe that is really what our relationship was based on, but it’s utility I couldn’t deny. After all of those long talks, the date with Tony glided smoothly and progressed smoothly.
I called her the next day while he was in the shower, curling myself into his sheets that smelled of chives and cinnamon, “You don’t understand, he really does listen at least for now.” And we both laughed and planned another date at the restaurant Tony works at on the day he is on so we can talk and admire his body from afar.
I could still taste scotch on my tongue and residue from Tony’s stare on my body.

I smelled my sweatshirt before I entered the apartment, but the smell of burnt chocolate greeted me before you did. You can running with ash smudges on your face and my apron tied constructively around your figure as if you were unable to figure our the contraption - which I wouldn’t put past you.
“I can explain!” You demanded, brushing your hand through your as a nervous habit. I placed my weight on one leg, tapping the opposite foot as I crossed my arms, “Happy Valentines Day.” You smiled as you gestured to a bright-red, heart-shaped box. My stance dropped and I was suddenly wrapped around you body, kissing you in response.
I grabbed the box, opening it carefully. “I wouldn’t eat it.” You warned lightly and I just laughed and ate a piece of chocolate anyway. I felt bad that you thought I was sick that night because of your chocolate and not the cancer the doctor’s had diagonsed me with earlier today. I didn’t want you to think that my “normal check-up” wasn’t normal at all.
Because who wants to marry a dying girl. I just wanted to be yours before I became nothing.
I twisted my ring around my left ring finger as you brushed my hair back, “We’ll go out to dinner tomorrow as celebration. I will throw out those chocolates as soon as possible. I’m so sorry. I will make sure that I try everything before I give it to you next time. I just wanted to make sure that you had a lot of chocolate because I know that is your favorite treat.” You blabbered on, attempting to regain whatever you thought you had lost.
My tears silenced your quiet promises, as you just held me, rocking me back and forth telling me that we’d get through this, but if you truly knew that this was, would you still want to go through it with me?

Your scent lingers on me like the taste of your kisses in my dreams, waking up with only sunlight on my features instead. A constant reminder of what is not mine and what can never be. Unless I craft reality out of this poison I keep injecting into my veins, drawing it straight into my right atrium and into my lungs and exhaled into reality.
So it will not only be your scent that lingers on me. But you will too, and so will the memories of our passing embraces.

Take my face in your hands, embrace, and press my lips to yours. Caress me with your tongue and make me sweat and cry all of my issues and problems away.
Kiss away my tears and make me cry with your name tainting my thoughts and the hue of my lips.

Whenever we are in the same vicinity, I cannot stop the drifting of my eyes. It’s like you’re a car crash and I’m rubbernecking or you’re the kid that was a little too disturbed by the blood typing lab and had to relieve his stomach right after lunch or you’re the girl that I think I know in the hallway and I keep attempting to place her face in my memory, facial recognition with all of the previous occasions I’ve had since birth.
You’re distracting, and obviously so. I am distracted by you. You are this walking disaster that I cannot take my eyes off of. The air bag has exploded in your face and you kind of look green and I’m not sure where I know you from, but I’m painfully aware that I cannot keep this up for long before you catch my lingering eyes and stare down at yourself in puzzlement, wondering what could have drawn my eye to your unkempt, preoccupied disposition.

I was burned by the acid of your tone, scorching me in the face, reeling back, grasping for something real, soft, cooling, yet the only thing that cascaded into my hands was the heaping vomits of your laughter, obnoxious, technicolor, rotting laughter that transcended time and space and hygiene, leaving a long lasting stain on me. Red wine, like my tears, that never really washes out of my clothes. And late at night while my current boyfriend’s hot breath brushes my hair into my face, I smell it and wonder what you are doing now, and where that disgusting, ridiculing laughter has taken you in life.

And then there is you, looming over me, threatening me, persuading me, corrupting me with alcohol and love and temptation. I cannot shy away. You make me laugh and yet I hate you so much. I hate the effort I must put in to sustain you, us, whatever we are trying to achieve in society.
I stated today that I would marry you, take out a life insurance policy on you, just to kill you and make money.
But now that I think back on it, I would make you take out the policy; it would look less suspicious that way.

Your memories burn in my lungs, and I just tell everyone I caught a cold this weekend from not getting enough sleep and freezing in my bed last night. The thoughts of you actually kept me wake, staring at the ceiling, circling my head like cartoon stars after I hit my head so concussively.
I cough, sputter, attempting to rid you from my lungs, tempting me with each breath. You don’t leave, firmly staying, gripping to my soft tissues. I feel you with each breath, scratching the insides of my throat and gnawing at the presence of my mind.
Leave me alone. I don’t know how long I can stand the thought of unattainable you and that smile and those eyes, piercing perfection, before I truly get sick and lose my lunch, right in front of you. I can only blame this on a cold for so long before you become suspicious of my actions.

Your image is burned into my corneas. I cannot even close my eyes and escape from you. Haunting like a song that doesn’t leave the creases of your mind, you dust along my thoughts like fog on a graveyard of lamentable dreams that will never be.

Are you really telling me this? Please thrust the red-hot burning end of a fireplace poker into my side again. Again. Again. What was that I couldn’t hear you the first time?
You cannot support me even when this is difficult, struggling even. The discomfort equates to that of a seat of thumbtacks. Too much surface area to actually pierce the skin, but enough to threaten my movements for what they could entail.
I’m scared, frightened of my ability, that I’ll never be enough. And yet, you criticize. Always.
Support. Sometimes you are sand beneath my feet, shifting through my toes.

I feel my body weighing me down, tying me to society, to the earth, to the bed I am lying in. I close my eyes and pretend what it would feel like to cut those threads and float in the breeze, drifting like nothing mattered.
I shiver, realizing that too much weightlessness makes me feel nauseous. I rise from my bed, pace my room, and plan out my next 24 hours, feeling secure in my plans and lists, assured that I wont ever float away like a balloon a child lets go of, cries about for five minutes, but later never remembers that red balloon.
I don’t want to be a balloon, deflated and thrown away after the party, but the thought of floating is more enticing than my mind can grasp.

If time stood still, would you still love me? I know as time moves on, so do you. But if I stopped it, paused it mid-second and came to pick you up in a hot-air balloon would you ride with me? Or has time already moved you too far?

My head aches, filled with a kaleidoscope of images of you that I replay like a cinema, charging my emotions to enter, and they pay the price each time.

I am incoherent and incapable of functioning, because I am constantly reminded of your eyes. Their opalescence, their neither green nor blue hue, and their fixated gaze, so intent upon me, almost transfixed in wonder.
But I doubt the capability of your wonder, for I am simple: I am just man; and some days even less than that.