Monsters under our skin
You could be found anywhere.
Every place is the same.
“Not hard to find you.”
She sat next to him wine bottle in hand.
He’d spent the hour sketching stories, trying to tie back how his novel was on the mark before it even happened.
It’s about a boy and girl,
some sort of love.
she was something else,
real flesh and blood,
nothing artificial; maybe that’s why she tasted so raw.
He went from one experience to another.
And then He met her.
She chose him he was positive of it.
He couldn’t pick her for this narrative.
Some show up broken, and you want to fix them.
This was the first time he saw a bad experience,
that could give him love.
He wasn’t ready,
untamed,
promiscuous,
and kissed different lips,
let his lips slip more than you’d know.
But she loved him anyway,
wanted to hang on,
must’ve seen he wanted the same,
just not far enough down the road.
It was simple,
always was,
but they complicated it,
always did.
He made promises he couldn’t keep,
so in turn she thought she could love him deeper, tighter.
One day it slipped,
“I love you,” he said,
whether it was drunk,
or stupid,
couldn’t tell you which,
sometimes people mean stupid.
A man should never love a woman that much,
outside of writing about her.
And only her,
all for her,
it was time to put away all the other toys,
and on this birthday she’d had enough,
he’d asked God knows what,
and her response was violent,
physical.
It wasn’t about the question,
it was the insecurity of every other woman,
whose legs he got between,
whether with his tongue or dick.
That night he’d left her hotel broken,
didn’t cry a single tear.
Just drove four hours.
So, that’s how it began.
He fell deeper into her,
and she couldn’t let go.
But that didn’t change anything about them.
He found himself in other women’s beds, bathrooms,
sometimes her friends.
There ain’t nothing healthy about it,
but that’s love,
it isn’t healthy,
it’s a codependency.
Imagine it like a laundry machine,
turning and churning,
then it stops.
It’d been years later,
but the same damn old laundry inside.
They dated,
broke up,
she loved him,
he acted out his love,
never said it in words again,
he remembered what happened last time.
It’d all changed,
only touched each other out of love.
They were each others hummingbirds.
But it’d all changed,
his father cheated on his mother,
and he took that as an example,
figured that’s who he was,
a cheater.
Why he was never going to be any good for no one.
He fell back to who he was.
Seven years just like that,
come and gone,
she hit him out of frustration, anger
1,
2,
3,
4,
It went annually, then monthly, and now it came anytime.
She knew it wasn’t okay.
He never gave her loyalty,
knew it wasn’t right,
but she never gave him a reason to.
But they hung on,
for when it was four AM,
they only talked to each other,
the rest of the world be damned.
“Was he ever going to be just hers?”
I think he wanted to,
he was afraid,
he wasn’t ever good for her,
and he knew that,
even when she got drunk and violent,
she’d sold him that it wasn’t completely her fault,
he’d never done the right thing long ago.
Luckily,
she finally let him go,
broke the cycle they were both in.
All it took was for him to have a tragedy bigger than her,
He’d lost his brother.
“what’s that got to do with it?”
Everything.
She left when he died,
didn’t think it was her place to be there,
she was done,
saw how unhealthy it was,
and she had a new love to be out in the open with.
“That’s awful timing.”
There’s never right timing.
“He ever make it okay?”
People always make it out alive,
they hang on,
clean up a bit,
but old habits have a long way of crawling out from under your skin.
“You ever get it out from under your skin?” She asked.
- Stories I’ll forget someday