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Oh relaxation, wouldn't that be grand.
Instead, she'd been hyper-vigilant for about five months - ever since July 3rd when she ventured into his orbit. She smelled him like prey and became it.
Once more at the dance.
One more time to fail at all the things to do to try to keep someone fascinated.
She wept a lot lately, but the splinter - or whatever it was in her eye - still remained screaming every time she blinked.
How many sad love songs could she digest before she realized the real deal: "narcissi, he's never going to love you. At most he'll let you swallow his come."
Let her.
That was a rub.
She had a delusion about her self because the man who beat her - the last spouse - was so much more in love with her than she in him (or was that such a fucking lie) that she was accustomed to being someone who was aloof and untouchable.
With this one, she was so so so so tired of her semi-weekly instances of laying in the bed begging with him while Siberia lay betwixt their minds. Alll she wanted was for him to reach out and cares her hair. He never even reached out after the first times because she was so starved for his touch - she would back that ass into his trunk and wiggle hoping that he would reach his arm for her "you have soft skin" and touch her.
She had been bleeding for ten days - a sort of record.
The heat was on 67 because she was NOT going to be cold today - damn the expense. She had been to the Highlands. No one really wanted to talk to her except the twin nieces. But she hid for a lot of it anyway - hid behind someone named after a street.
Nothing really mattered. She fantasized about how to kill herself many many times, but she also had to the tattoo to remind her that she was a fraud even in that department.
As they were coming down the mountain, she knew she would regret it before she even said the word "nah" to his offer of stopping to let her slide down the fake snow decline in an inflated tube.
Regrets? all the time.
The day was dull and cold. She'd keep trying to stop monitoring the emojis that decorated her attempts to get him to see her.
Her hope was that she would get used to it more and more each hour.
"drink up baby. stay up all night. the things you'll do. you won't but you might."
That one had stabbed his heart twice as the lore goes.
She got it.
--
The robot shat on her when she asked it to analyze this piece, so she was back doing what it told her not to do and instead of writing less, she was going to pour more sauce on the turkey. She was great at flooding engines - eons of scrimmage.
One of her favorite parts of the disappointment had been her laying in bed watching a turned over football game with someone who thought she was a foolish grappler. That had been super awesome. She wanted to scream so many words at him - things like - and it made her cry when she imagined saying anything real with him - so she knew this must cut to the marrow - things like "fuck me. how the mother fuck do you expect me to feel a smidgeon of confidence and light-heartedness when my heart is so fucking heavy because I have no idea why you're here. And I'm afraid to ask you things like whether you know this is me inviting you into the most intimate of spaces to me - do you realize that I am an orphan in this - that you were here to make me feel confident? I used to be the golden child of this family. now I'm a fat pariah who wonders why I'm that character from stars wars that the more I grip tighter the more it all falls out of my hand."
You would answer something deflecting. I would try to act cool.
and thus the person is now first.
The Christmas cactuses are the same as when she left them - all pregnant blooms.
When he loved her more. When there was a hope he might love her, it had been prisms from drunken rainbow crystals from Florida. When it was over, it had been cramped rooms expensive with fraught faraway family flirting with ghosts of the past in a mountain town that reminded her of that male rape movie in the mountains.
It was often too much for her to handle. But she had no choice but to handle it as the skin had been marked. She was well used to being alone. She could do it in her sleep. The most - the very most - important thing was to extricate herself from the addiction of wanting him to love her. She downloaded the dating app for the third time hoping it might be a charm - but first she'd have to look at it. She also dreamt of finding the best most fitting French flick to drown her pain - and she wished she would write it.
---
They are laying on a bed. He's doing his crossword puzzle or checking the local Tinder - she never knows because he never tells her anything.
She puts on some stupid British Christmas farce movie as she gives up trying to work the remote control.
"you know why I'm like this? not only am I around the family that shaped me into feeling so small and faceless - you exacerbate my problems. Never once have you said a kind word to me - never once have you implied there might be a future with me. You show up less and less and fuck me like someone going through a blind motion, and I'm the object of your thrusts and look at me dancing like the fool at the rodeo. I've loved you from the moment I recognized you as my tribe. I've been trying so hard to be the coolest of girls, and I'm so tired of weeping in the bed next to you after you scooch away from my arm reaching out to you. I've lost my mind in your deflection. I can't do this anymore. I'm so tired of crying in the middle of the night wondering why I can't touch you."
"goodbye."
The splinter or whatever it was remained in her right eye - reminding her every time she blinked. The crystal emitted rainbows. It was all a moment, and the ball was still in the yellow cup - as was the pressed daisy that you said was so weird.
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