Do/Don't.

I fantasize about the extremes, Marie.

I dream the good life. All those dainty romantic clichés. I wake you up, playing my guitar, singin' all those damn songs I loved to sing to you and you'd hit me with your pillow. Kisses stolen in supermarkets as strange fuckers looked on in jealously. I'd wine and dine you, take you to fancy restaurants, greasy spoons and country cafes. We'd travel the world, see Paris from the Eiffel Tower, ski down Austrian slopes before making love in the chalet after wards. I'd take you to see coral reefs and monkeys and wherever you wanted to go. I'd bend on one knee in a posh hotel room, just my y-fronts and shirt on as you looked out onto the city with that clingy negligee on. I would paint you, even as the fucking stick-woman that my artistic abilities limit me to. I'd wax lyrical, snatch the moon from the stars and threaten to cut my own legs off to catch a train to meet you. And you'd smile and cry and run up into my arms and I'd drop you by accident. We'd build a house somewhere only we know and walk around naked and raise six kids. We'd raise them and send them off into the world before growing old together.

And I have nightmares about the bad. You sleep with another man, wrapping your legs around him, panting like a desperate bitch in need of someplace to die. You'd shred my clothes and burn them in a fire in the backyard, tossing in effigies and anything you could think of that reminded you of me. There'd be no us. The house would get lonely and you'd find another man to fall for. I see myself, waiting around for you, drinking bottle after bottle of scotch, deciding to neck the red wine when I run out and it makes me weep. the house becomes dustier, dirtier. My hair goes grey and I lose any work. Maybe a friend helps, or a doctor but I get clean, but nervous, timid. I try dating, speed dating, blind dating, double dating, Internet dating, lonely hearts columns and maybe, alongside a few one night stands, the only girl I can get is desperate only for a man's touch or an instant father figure. And I'd see you one day, walking along the street, looking like that sophisticated creature you are on the arm of some cunt who makes a living by fleecing old bastards out of their life savings and you couldn't give a damn because of that diamond on your finger and the mink around her neck.

But, truth is? Both of those is preferable to this. the silences, the mundane, the dull, dreariness that punctuates our relationship. We don't talk, we don't kiss, we don't fuck except on special occasions. And where does that leave me? catch 22.

There is so much love here, Marie. But nowadays, I'm feeling it's one-sided.

And...it's killing me.