lilith

I have momentum. Graduated and moved out of state, new job, new apartment, my life taking shape around me. Then I meet her, and everything halts. She slips her way in, or did I invite her? Soon, it's as if she'd always been there. Familiar like a face from a dream, but in the blacks of her eyes, I see only future, our future together. She has me completely. Soon, I cannot remember before her. I fear I would not exist without her, and she says she feels the same. We ensconce ourselves in my apartment. Our passion becomes our entire world. An intoxicating excitement fills me, layers of pleasure that overwhelm, sedate. And years later it makes me dizzy to think what a prison we'd built for ourselves, but then it felt like paradise. Every time we make love, I feel a piece of myself seeping out, a hollowness and a relief. Subtle connections like tiny hooks establish between us, and I feel myself draining throughout the day, even during the rare quiet moments when she is not by my side. Is she okay? Is she safe? Are we okay? Are we safe? Is this what I want, what she wants? Draining, draining. I lose myself; I am pallid. I no longer appear in the bathroom mirror or in the mirror of my mind, which is no longer private. She does nothing wrong; she also suffers. She exists, and I am drained. I do nothing wrong; I also suffer. I am drained, and she exists. We live like host and parasite feeding on false hope, the trap of optimism, traversing a curved universe, a loop disguised as a line. Her eyes are now black holes, undeniably attractive, pulling me down into a core that stretches and tears me apart until there's nothing left to give. But one day, inexplicably, although it feels wrong, I begin to steal moments of solitude away from her gravity, and these gather like so many pebbles into a mountain, and with this old strength I start to sever the connections, which sting, but with every detachment, something returns back into myself, like a burst dam in reverse. The last bloody connection is cut, and I shut her out, and it is like a great storm has subsided, and there is deep quiet and loneliness that feels full. It is over. I lock my door and drag my aching bones to bed and try to forget again.