- a new beginning -

I keep a picture of my ex hidden away, right next to my cigarettes. Old habits die hard, I guess. She told me I broke her heart. Said I should never have made her believe – in good, in love, in us. Well, she broke my heart first. Fair’s fair.

*

I never thought it could work. Call it a defence mechanism, if you must. Got severe abandonment issues, you see. Something about seeing people you love die does that to you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I warned her. Told her to stay away, that I was a mess, that I’d break everything before I let her get too close.

That’s when she kissed me. 

Again, and again. 

The first time we made love, I had tears in my eyes (I admit this, freely). She traced my spine with her fingers, I danced my tongue around her waist, that cut just above the pelvis. She sighed, and I moved lower, my fingernails digging a faint pattern into her back. When she screamed out loud, her voice joined mine. 

We were animals, then.

*

“Will you ever let me go?” she asked, one night, after dinner, her hands enclosed in mine.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to,” I said. Never could lie outright. Who’s to say what happens five minutes from now, let alone five years. (There I go again, covering my bases.)
“But you will, won’t you?”
“I never said that. Besides, if my luck holds, you’ll leave first,” I said, smiling. I don’t fear abandonment anymore. It’s part of the course. I expect it.
Seriously, she took my hands and moved them to her heart. Looking deep into my eyes, she said “I will always be with you. Always.”

Liar.

*

“Thief!”
Accusations fly around this house easy. They bounce right off the walls, keep bouncing till they hit something, or, more often, someone.
“What’d I do?” I am bewildered. Some say it comes naturally to me, but they also think I’m a paranoid schizophrenic. Me? I know better.
She thinks I took money out of her purse to pay for the drugs in my back pocket. It’s a new tactic she’s trying. She knows she can’t get me to stop by telling me it’s bad for me, so she’s going to try and guilt me out of the habit. 

Fair enough, I suppose.

How do you explain to someone you think you love that they’re just not enough? 

Yeah, you don’t. You say you’re sorry, instead. You hope that makes up for something, and you hope you two are strong enough to survive. But deep down, you know better. You know that once something’s broken, it doesn’t matter how much you try to fix it, how much you want to fix it, you can’t. Nothing is forever, and nothing changes. Either you live with what you’ve got, or you chase shadows.

“I’m sorry,” I hear myself saying. “I didn’t mean to. I’ll be better . . I . . I promise.”

*
It seems like she drags the storm in with her when she comes back.
“Where’ve you been?” I ask her, knowing I don’t want to know. 
“Out,” she says, knowing the same.

I take another drag. She snatches the cigarette out of my mouth. Tells me it’s bad for me, that I should take better care of myself. 

Takes a drag, and then stubs it out.

Looks like we’ve both had a rough night. I offer her my hand. She takes it, almost unconsciously. Wraps her fingers in mine, like we used to, and pulls me closer to her. I’ve never felt as at home as in that moment – the moment after I just took a hit of acid, and she came back from her ‘friends’ place. Yeah, it’s a fucked up life, isn’t it?

As I look back, I keep telling myself it was the drugs. But we both know better. For people like us, that’s the only home we have to look forward to.

*