For A While

Heavy heartbeats in sync, flesh against flesh, inhaling as she exhales, breathing her, her eyelashes against my cheek, lips against my neck, our eyes meeting, the curve of her body fitting into mine. Very much I love you. She gives me all of these things, these human things. All mine.

But then there is what I am not allowed to think about. How many times do you blink? That's how many times it enters my mind. Think of all of the things you need. Food, water, air? I didn't need that when I had cocaine shooting up my nostrils and zooming through my brain. I couldn't die and I didn't feel human.

This couldn't replace a person. It wasn't all mine. But it was pure and I was so convinced that I needed it. All of the time, in my system. Killing my nerves, opening my mind. There was so much to see, so much to do. It could all be done, it could all be seen if only...

I was not allowed to think about this.

It was hot and I hadn't slept in a while. Deprivation made me nauseas and self-battling. These thoughts, these needs, these wants – they wouldn't go away. My wrists were beating against the headboard and bruises were forming, a drumbeat for her.

Darling, can't you see? Very much I love you. Can't you hear?

She could make it go away, those thoughts, those needs, those wants. She embodied them, she fuelled them, and she could take it all away.

I was sticky from the heat despite being naked and I was sure I was coming down with something. I wanted to shed the outer layers of the skin that smothered me. I wanted to be released from lucid thoughts and dreamlessly sleep until she got here. Because, more than anything, I wanted Charlotte. I wanted her to tell me that I was human and worth it.

My wrists stopped beating because she wasn't coming and this wasn't doing anything. I peeled myself from the sheets and put on my underwear. I combed the hair I'd recently cut very short due to heat and began cleaning our flat. It was filthy. It was the apartment of a drug user. This persona did not apply to me any more. I'd stripped of it long ago within those walls, with those come-down drugs pumping through me, those wires climbing up my body and strapped to my inner elbow.

By seven am I was asleep on the couch with a dishrag in my limp hand. Up all night until I crash. So familiar it was almost scary.

When I woke, I'd been carried back to bed and could hear Charlotte singing to herself in our shower. Just like that, she was back. Slipped in like she slipped out, like she was never gone.