Loneliness
Your day is hearing about a multi-page obituary for a man you didn’t know and yet somehow still feel for really only because the end of his life brought so much fuckery to those who were left of him, and he never would have wanted that. He was also an addict, like you, and you were a baby, but even then you could see him popping pills and lighting matches and keeping his fears tucked under dusty old piles of things that your grandmother, his keeper, kept in that house, and you remember being scared of him, and not much else, but different kinds of scared, like the scared of getting in trouble but then also like the scared you felt when you would see him choke up with emotion because he thought you were incredible and how could you possibly be real and you were confused and a baby and so you ran. And he ran and everybody in the whole damn family ran. Miles and miles and miles and whole damn marathons. You ran when you saw your parents hugging in the kitchen on that random day that is seared in your memory and you don’t even know if it was winter or summer or fall and if you’d ever seen them touch before or since but definitely not since. Maybe it was spring. You ran when you finally saw a flicker of someone showing anything that wasn’t nothing and that was your mother screaming for your father not to leave her and you ran because not long before that the person who first ever fucked you (and you still remember the underwear you picked for that Tuesday in September) later wished you were dead and his mother wished you were his ex and his ex said you were just a mini worse version of her and basically you were never just right being just you. And you wanted to scream like your mother for him not to leave you either! Because at that time you were a doll and you played in these houses for these people who you thought if you played well enough for would never leave you, could never leave you because you were perfect. But only you will never leave you and it’s only you there at the end at the very, very end. And the only way out of loneliness is to shake his hand and tell him it’s okay, he can touch you, and suddenly he is, and you feel nothing only shame that your antidepressants have made you less than your best. But the next time you see him, you’re off your meds and you’re sitting right beside the devil and you say you’ve been waiting and you’ve orchestrated this moment by moment by moment from the 401 to cumming on your couch and you’ve been sleeping with loneliness for months now and he’s so deep inside of you that now you’re the one standing at the end of that long dark road and beckoning, beckoning, beckoning. Please come and stay with me, please come inside of me, please. Please.