new years eve

the first time i ever felt afraid for you.

You told me before... about the time you let death seduce you. You told me about the pills that caressed your throat and the plume of darkness that opened in your belly... in your brain. When you said that you woke up with your cheek on the road as the first snow all winter fell around you, i almost felt the cold seeping in through my bed sheets which were then tucked tightly around my fists. When I imagined your disoriented form running from your porch steps at 3 a.m. screaming silently for help, begging to take back your death wish... when i imagined that, I think my brain decided to cut off the feeling. To close off the wound of an artificial memory, because seeing you in that much pain was so... cruel, my brain didn't even understand what it was attempting to process. and so i dissociated from the idea that you'd ever want death more than you wanted me. and the idea faded, by and by with each passing day. until the you who wanted to die before December didn't even exist anymore. but on December 31st at 11:32 p.m. , that you was living beside me again as i tried to clutch onto the you i knew. instead of pills there was champagne and instead of the cold street there was my chest... but what was the difference when you still wanted to rip a hole in my outer space right in front of me and crawl away there? What was the difference when you were still so hollow that you'd be willing to leave a hole in my universe just to fill, with life or blood or anything at all really? I watched you, the all too routine feeling of empty settled in my chest... I watched you dance on the bed with your glass clutched between two finger like you were out, clubbing with people and loud music and all good intentions... rather than in my bed while I sat on the floor and watched you with no intention at all other than to wake you up from the chasm of emptiness that winter had settled into your veins. 

When the bed broke and you lay on my bedroom floor crying with a shard of glass sticking out of your palm and blood pooling onto my floor, i watched you still. anytime i tried to speak, your drunken rambling drowned out my desperate cries for your sanity. it was 11:42 and the sound of the t.v. playing the new years ball drop downstairs was calling to me loudly. begging me to dissociate, break away, run before my brain was sacrificed too with the blood you'd left on my bed sheets. but you looked up at me with a pink nose, glistening eyes, and matted hair and all over again, i told myself i loved you. 

at 11:53 your eyes were drying and your fingers were curling around the blanket i'd found for you in the attic as you fell asleep. my feet brushed over the ground lightly as i walked downstairs to see the first few seconds of a new year without the thought of your chipped nail polish leaving black bits all over my bedroom floor when you were crying and chipping away at your nails. when the ground found my knees and the t.v. program towered over my head as if it had power over me, it felt natural to stay there. when my eyes rolled back in my head rather than my eyelids closing naturally, it felt normal. and when the screaming of a new year surrounded me as if i were lying on the ground in time square, i couldn't even bring myself to stop my collapsing body. 

when your bitten down fingernails grazed over my arm i found more comfort in letting out a small sigh of fake sleep than i would have in opening my eyes and accepting that you still existed and your tears were running down my cheek like blood. when you told me the things you loved about me it took effort not to smile which was ironic considering i hadn't smiled because of you since December 3rd. when you said you were sorry i couldn't bring myself to open my eyes. i only sighed as if i were sleeping once again. 

when i felt the cold of December on my feet i knew the front door was open and when i heard the door shut with a final chest rattling sob, i knew i'd never see you again. 

Author's Note

hi there :) as usual i hope you enjoyed this even though i'll lament it's a little heavy, although that is sort of my regular writing style... i don't really know why haha. hope you enjoyed reading, let me know what you think! -mackenzie