Adrienne

You comb your fingers upwards through his hair, still wet from the shower. Shampoo doesn’t wash away betrayal and his mind hasn’t left the bathroom. He’s staring at his plate like it’s his reflection in a toilet bowl.

You take the fork, glinting under the kitchen light and bring it to his lips, waiting quietly. He opens his mouth not to accept, but to snap at you, to tell you that he’s perfectly capable of feeding himself. You’d have snapped back, cursed at him maybe, if this were any other day, any ordinary pain. But it’s not and you can barely speak.

You try to speak anyway. You rub his arm, watching helplessly as he buries his face in his hands, and try to entice him with an old favorite movie. The words come out like an off-key funeral dedication, the exact opposite of the cheer you tried to force into your voice.

He nods and stands up and you take his hand, trying to hold on to him, trying to keep him from fading away.

It’s his left hand. You can feel the gold wedding band against your palm and your whole being fills with something. It’s somewhere between affection and anger, toying with the boundary between love and disease. You look at the petit man next to you as you lead him to the sofa, not daring to look into his eyes just yet. You’re afraid of what you’ll find, of what you won’t find.

He sits next to you with his legs crossed, facing the screen but he’s not looking at it. He’s not looking at anything, really; his face, his entire body is vacant. It throbs and aches, bitter and dull, from the inside out. It bruises you.

Your hands embrace his and you beg him to speak, cry, do something, anything just to let you know for sure that he’s still alive. Because you can hear the sleeping wish from inside of him – not for death, but for non-existence. Nothingness. Escape.

He replies to your pleas as a different kind of beggar, looking for words instead of alms. You pull him close and he breathes into your heartbeat, ragged rhythms finding comfort in each other.

He needs you.

It breaks you, confuses you, shatters you to find him so desperately lost. When was he ever like this? When was the last time he cried against the crook of your neck like this? It had been his father, leaving him for the soft churchyard earth. And now…

You kiss his knuckles, one by one, feeling the cold metal of her wedding vows on your lips. You hold him closer, pressing lightly against the scratches from the morning’s altercation.

Michael.

He feebly whispers your name into your skin and you hold him tighter, closer still. Your palms move soothing circles across his spine. His lashes flutter against your pulse and all the fury and disorder lodge themselves in your throat. He holds his breath and closes his eyes.

It’s not supposed to be like this.