It feels like every word, and every look she gives me is another tooth on the zipper that invisibly runs off center down my chest, each tug down is like a cut. Her liltless voice is pummeling my senses, and her eyes, her eyes are passionless. I think, no, I know that I took that from her. One more notch on the zipper, but I try my best to speak my feelings, my reasons, futile and selfish as they may be. I think it worked, somewhat, she admits her desire to not be alone, instead of a notch down on the zipper, it feels like she's reached inside my chest and is delicately massaging my heart, one hard squeeze and she could kill me, she has no idea.
Hours later, sitting in a pay by the hour motel room, she's patching me up, yet again. Last time she did this for me, I crossed that line, and right now it feels like that line is shakily back in its place. Peroxide on an open wound, no, it doesn't feel good, but at least it's real, and she's here tending to it. She's trying to draw lines between the running, and the chase, well, her minds eye of chasing a high. I never thought of my behavior as having an addictive quality, but sitting here, her wrapping up my arm in gauze and sterile bandages again, her weary eyes seeking mine out, feels like she trying to draw my will out with every gaze, every flick of her eyelids, it's all too real. Yeah, I can't say I enjoy running, but I can't say that it doesn't bring something out in me that was dead, or dying before. In more ways than I would ever like to count, or think about, I'm more alive than I've ever been. However, I won't allow myself, not one iota, to relish how alive I feel sitting here with her, how alive, and how calm, it's amazing.
Stepping out of the shower, and stepping back into the clothes carried in my lone paper bag, I feel calm, collected, better from the stream of water, the steam, and the soap. Although, once I turn that corner in the room, shuffle my feet on that rough carpeting, and see that the room is silent and empty all for me, I feel that grip around my insides she had before, the pain rips through me, fast. Reading her note, I sit back on the cheap table. I deserve this, I know do.
