Incarceration, institution, or death.

...and I'm already two for three. 

Maybe it's my Catholic upbringing...

But I need to confess. To someone, anyone, I need to tell the real story of how it happened. I don't know if I just need to get it off my chest, or maybe I want someone to know what I'm really capable of. Maybe I want to test the age old adage that the truth will set you free. 

Does that still apply when the truth is something dirty and awful?

Probably the most dominant emotion I have, ever-present and tyrannical, is shame.

SHAME.

DOUBT.

INSECURITY.

FEAR. NEED. DENIAL.

I am embarrassed. I am humiliated. It's like I banished myself to the depths of my own dungeons, but with just a wing and a prayer, I began to hope for a way out, began to forget that this darkness around me was no ones fault but my own. 

When I built this penitentiary, my single-cell Supermax, I lined the walls with my greatest fears. I hung every charge against me like Tiger Beat posters in a teen girl's room. Hundreds of thousands of pictures and words, overlapping each other and hugging every visible inch of my cage. Evidence. Every scrap of damning evidence, a mosaic of memories, bore witness to my sins. If you stood in the dead center of it all, you could see them as parts of a whole, illustrating the crime I've been convicted of.

Fraud.

I am a fraud.

And I am guilty.

But ever so subtly, as I carried out my sentence, my weaknesses began to get the better of me. My hopes and fantasies, wishes I never even bothered to wish, began to knit themselves together and take shape. Giant wings formed and stretched themselves wide, covering the tapestries I'd placed to keep myself locked away. They unfolded themselves to reach their full open span, muscles rippled under the countless white feathers and grew stronger by the minute.

It practically writes itself, really, this pathetic story...

When the demons who secured my prison were blocked out by the guardian angel my dreams pretended to be, I forgot about them entirely. I started to believe in my distractions, my delusions, they were all I could see. I constructed my totem carefully, forming an idol that gave shape to all those things I forbid myself to say. And then I took that last, tiny step off the edge of reality, and fell face first into what was, essentially, a scarecrow. The next natural thing was to breathe life into it. This imaginary cell mate I created was just to keep me company in my solitude, but I poured so much of my soul into it I began to lose my perspective. It took that one breath I gave it and awoke with a start, gathering me up in strong angel arms to carry me up and out of darkness, gaining momentum with powerfully flapping wings. Each fluffy white feather was a pretty white lie I told myself to escape an eternity reliving my mistakes.

I almost made it out alive, too.

Almost.

But that wasn't really freedom I thought I was heading for. The bright orb above me I willed those lie-covered wings towards was the harsh light of reality, and as we flew closer I felt it like the heat of the sun, scorching the pristine white feathers. Just like that, I plummeted all the way back down to where I started, a whirlwind of smoke and flames trailing after. Those wings, those beautiful wings, were nothing more than white feathered lies that danced as they fell, burning all the while, before settling on me as a blanket of dull gray fluff.

Its not that the walls weren't high, I had built them as high as I could, and they appeared to have risen impossibly higher as I looked all the way up the length of them from the heap I'd collapsed in when I hit the cold, hard floor. The regrets and reminders I'd plastered all over them weren't just condemning me anymore, they mocked and jeered at my attempt to fly the coop. I was breathless. Injured. Immobilized. There wasn't anything left to do but lay as a few wispy gray tufts continued their descent like snowflakes, burying me in the ashes of each white feathered lie that had gone up in flames.

a waiting room to purgatory.

I am the teeth rotting out of your face. 

I am the ghost that haunts their empty space. 

the secrets hiding in your mouth, held and chewed and kept at bay. 

those bones that creak, the lies you speak,

it's me. 

it's me. 

it's me. 

every night I pray at the edge of that grave, which for some reason, no one has ever bothered to fill. it occurs to me ever so briefly that maybe I'm the one who was supposed to fill it, but then the thought is gone. 

my knees pressed into the mud, my hands to the sky, "help me!" I beg her. "what do I do now that you've left me here? what do I do without you?"

I'm here, she whispers as the dry leaves flutter around me. Its me, she says, as rain falls into my upturned palms. when she was alive, when she was here, when she was the girl I went to hell for and stole her back from the devil himself, she had eyes like fog and needles. 

she had eyes like the dead.

but I believe she still saw me. I had to.

she had arms like a sieve but she still held me, tighter than I've ever been held. 

I know she's here. I know the sun that creeps up over Death Knoll has her in it. I know the wind that bites and nips my cheeks is her. but I can't let go of who she was, who she used to be. I always said she was too beautiful for this world and I stand by it, I do. I'm sure now that she breezes from heaven and earth and back she's in a much better place. I know she's happier. it's why her words are gentle. it's why the lavender air is so faint you'd hardly notice, if you weren't expecting it. 

but FUCK her. what about me?

when the warmth from the morning wakes me up graveside, a brand new day filled with promise, I beg her to come back. if anyone can do it she can. 

it's because I love you, the dew (her) tells me. I can finally show you now. 

I turn my face. I want to hide. I hate the sun. 

but now, the birds chirp (her), the sun never stands still. you have mornings, noons, and nights. you have everything you wanted. everything you asked me for. 

maybe I didn't steal her from the devil after all. maybe we struck a deal. yes I wanted days and nights, I wanted sun and warmth and life and stars and love and hate and oh... but I wanted them with her. 

after everywhere I went for her. after all the people I was for her. after every despicable, disgusting thing I did, the gallons of blood I washed off my hands for her, I had hoped I would have something to show for these scars besides the fucking sunrise. 

nobody likes to watch the sunrise alone. 

ENC1101- 6/2012 midterm

Most situations speak to a particular side of the affected, calling out to either their good or bad qualities.  When one’s good qualities are more dominant, they tend to be called on more often.  The higher the percentage of positive traits to negative ones, the higher the likelihood that they will control the outcome.  But this isn’t set in stone, and it’s not always the case.  If an event speaks to your less dominant side, sometimes that part of you just answers, whether you give it leave to do so or not.

            I believe in friendship, in camaraderie.  I believe in loyalty.  I believe we can only face a single direction in a given moment, and that it’s up to us to look out for each other.  It’s up to us to protect one another from the threats that attack from directions we can’t see.  Once upon a time, my #1 sidekick, my first choice in who I would share my foxhole with, fell prey to drugs.  The rumors had been flying for months, every time one hit my ears was like the deafening crack of enemy fire. Under shelter of our friendship, I hid from the attacks, sticking my neck out from the barricade every now and again to hurl my rebuttals.  I fought long and hard, constantly on the defensive, but it seemed like we were surrounded on all sides.

            Eventually the shelter began to give way, and under constant bombarding the stronghold of our union began to crack.  I turned to my counterpart, frantic and desperate, hoping he had back-up ammunition to return fire with because I had long since run out.  But when I finally faced him, I didn’t see what I was expecting.  He wasn’t on the other side of our base, at the ready.  He wasn’t waging the same war I was. He had curled up on the floor, numb to the constant attack on the shelter I had given my heart and my reputation to protect.  What happened next shames me to this very day.

            For all my conviction on the subject of loyalty, for all the strength I believed myself to possess concerning the matter, I abandoned him too.  Once I realized I was the only one of us fighting, I turned and left, waving my white flag of surrender.  I like to think that I was shell shocked, that I had fought to the point of exhaustion and that my decisions were no longer my own. The fact is, I was weak.

            Once the truth came out, which it inevitably does, I dropped those convictions.  I like to think it was in an effort to distance myself from unsavory behavior and potential downfall, but the reality is I turned traitor because I felt betrayed.  My weakness was my vulnerability, and I let my broken heart overshadow the fact that my friend’s life was in danger; he was in need.

            For a time, I joined the other side, firing off insults and throwing grenades built of malice and spite. But after awhile, I realized he wasn’t defending himself, he never fought back.  The mortally wounded, as it happens, often don’t.

            Not long after that, I came to my senses and found myself again.  I went back and looked for him.  I dragged him out of that ditch and nursed him back to health.  With the civil war over and our little social web quiet on all fronts, we let bygones be bygones.  In every war, there are casualties, and there are friendships that never recovered from the battles that shook us all.  But for the most part, we, most of us, forgave each other our trespasses.  It took much longer for me to forgive myself.  I can’t say with certainly that I ever really did. 

            Our friendship resumed.  It picked up where we left off, and never again have I doubted in his loyalty, and thankfully, nor he in mine.  We’re better friends now; we’re better people for living through the fallout of that year, but I haven’t forgotten when I let my weakness leave a fallen soldier behind.  I’m sure I never will.

possession is nine-tenths of the law

when a person dies, they may stay in spirit, if their business is unfinished enough.

if their energy is strong enough, they could speak to the living. 

and every once in a great while, if all the stars align and that spirit has enough to say, they may even inhabit some broken, empty person they left behind.

her words out of my mouth. 

her thoughts in my head. 

she's inside me. 

I can't pinpoint what happened. maybe during one of those endless funeral services, one of those many cold, still nights when I stood over that hole in the ground, maybe that's when it happened. maybe all the accusations I hurled woke her up. maybe the countless barbs I shot hooked under her electromagnet ribcage and ripped her from that bruised petal body, forced her through the spaces in those cheap, unfinished pine slats and back up to the surface. maybe my sobs and tears, my whimpers and moans, lured her upright on the edge of that abyss to stare me down, eye to eye, nose to nose. maybe my desperate gulps for air drew her into a mouth propped open with a long, drawn out scream sounding vaguely like her name. maybe my eyelids, clamped shut in an attempt to slow the drips and drops of wet, salty grief locked her in here with me. 

maybe I held tight, with a churning stomach and ripe, gripping lungs, as desperate to hold her as I ever was. 

or maybe that wispy, willowy, angel's breath soul had been with me since the day I cut her heart out. maybe I stole them both together, greedily hoarding them under my skin so I wouldn't be without her even though I was walking away. 

maybe every funeral I attended, every night I inched my toes over the edge of that seemingly bottomless pit, every  insult I spat onto a splintery, nameless box was an effort to exorcise her from me at last. maybe every goodbye I choked on was her, scraping my throat and wrapping herself around my tongue to avoid being wretched out into the stark, harsh reality of a world without each other. 

whichever it was, she stayed. and I kept her. 

we share an existence, a body, a mind, a heartbeat. 

she thinks, and I say it. 

I hurt, she weeps. 

I was always the louder of us, I was brash and imposing. she more or less stood slightly behind me and to the side, a shadow. but now, after her life and death and resurrection, she has possessed me. it's in the silence of midnight car rides that she speaks. it's the stealthy slip of steady hand, up under my shirt and along my spine that operates my dumb, speechless mouth. a caress of the neck and the ventriloquist show begins, my ripe, life bitten lips whisper her words to the wind as it blows across the surface of the earth and dissipates into the heavens. 

not knowing how it started doesn't matter, who inhabits whom is irrelevant. what I do know is that I can never again sleep without her dreams to keep me under. I would never again address god if she was not supplying the prayer. I would feel nothing if her tears didn't sting my eyes, if her laugh didn't spark my smile. 

to some folks, some folks think possession is to be controlled and manipulated by a force other than oneself. some folks think possession is quite simply, ownership. 

but to me, to her, to Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end, we think to call it nothing more than a Tuesday. 

(not untitled, but no title)

I've never really been able to explain Imogene in a coherent fashion. 

I think it's because the so-called living don't understand what it's like being trapped between the two worlds like I am. between here and there. between now and then. they don't get how I can't assign myself to one or the other, life or death. they certainly don't grasp that Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end, was more than just a girl, a person. she was a smile. she was a kiss. she was a laugh, a fuck, a teardrop. she was a place. she was a time. she was a feeling. 

when I met her, it was like getting in touch with an old friend after years of separation. as we told each other about ourselves and pretended to get acquainted, there was a recognition, a familiarity, a sigh of "oh, I already know you" and relief at finally being reunited. 

when I kissed her, it was everything you grew up expecting kisses to be. it was like the point in the movie where the hero, whom you'd never doubted all along, finally gets the kiss from his object of affection that you wanted him to have in the very first act.  it was the first spoonful of pudding in your grade school lunch box, cool and sweet. the way it slipped over your tongue and slid down your throat with ease, conforming perfectly to the shape of your mouth, coating your lips with a light sheen of happy that left you hungry for more as soon as you licked it off. 

the nights we stayed up worshipping each other, the nights that were ultimately when she first set hooks in my heart, were just like the concerts you went to as a teenager. the exhilaration of the sound waves being so strong they were tangible, bodies packed in, sweaty and excited, like Alaskan salmon battling to get upstream. it was those nights I fell for her like a stage dive, that feeling of "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing but I'm gonna do it anyway!" that sensation of your toes leaving solid ground, a nervous, electric free fall, and finally, being caught by eager, frantic hands. 

being in love with her was a drive in the fall. the colors were vivid, the ride was smooth, and the air itself was enough to make you feel alive. 

being without her was a week of insomnia. the flies on the wall saw you pace and moan, saw you whimper and turn circles in your bed until you (almost on accident) wound your sheets into a makeshift noose. they buzzed about your head, following you from room to room to empty pointless room, all the while making a constant droning sound that you hear even still.

getting her back was the shower after a very, very long, hard day. she was the water you lifted your face up to, no reservation or hesitation, letting it drench you from the top of your tired, weary head and rush it's way down over your sore throat, your aching shoulders, your protruding hips, down the backs of your trembling knees.  imagine letting her wash the day and the exhaustion and everything that wasn't her off your flushed exposed skin while the steam rose and filled your lungs and cleared your senses. and when you just can't take the downpour of hot and the thick, wet clouds anymore, you turn the water off, wrap yourself in terry cloth love, and emerge a new person. 

losing her was the worst ill you've ever been. the pain and tired, coupled with the "how?" and the "why,?" covered in "ohmyfuckingGODwillthiseverbeover?!"  it was the oaths you swore to a god you usually don't believe in, laying in your own toxic sweat, swearing things you don't usually mean but you would mean them this time if only this misery would stop, or even lessen. it was a car wreck, terrifying and chaotic. it was trading your existence for the color red; like going from having and appreciating all five senses and the variety that they afford you, to the only thing you know being the touchtastesmellsoundlook of searing heat. 

but these aren't specific memories, experiences.  this is just the closest I can get to describing a girl, the girl I lived and died for. the girl who took me aback, took me aside, took me from behind; I was so taken with her. explaining that to the average joe has only ever gotten me the kind of glassy-eyed, slack-jawed stare that so often precedes "do you want some fries with that?" 

I have trouble believing that anybody who didn't know her, and know her the way I did, was ever really alive anyway. 

she's my heart, my lungs. 

she's my blood, my air. 

...haunted or not, ghost or not, the fact is she's still fucking gone. 

 

cotton fever

sometimes, being haunted isn't that bad, not really. 

every time she was taken from me before, I would scrape the walls of my skull, I'd push my way through the sinewy mass around my brain like walking through a roomful of cobwebs. I would let my footsteps echo across the empty surfaces as I made my way down a mental hall of mirrors and memories. I would really feel the lonely, like one feels the winter cold in their bones. 

sometimes I'd shut myself inside this backstabbing, treacherous mind I've got and think her name for hours on end. 

now that I'm haunted, I'm never alone, not really. 

it has it's downsides though. sometimes when a real, live person speaks to me I can't hear them over the breathy angel sighs she makes in my ear. she always keeps herself wrapped around me, like a mink stole, filtering their words, only allowing the ones she knows I like to reach me.  sometimes she does them the same favor, and sifts through my response so that by the time it goes from my throat to my mouth to the air to the opposition, she's removed all but what she knows they want to hear as well. sometimes she plays mediator, protecting me from their coldness, and keeping my heat insulated, trapped closely between just the two of us. when she rests, nuzzled against my neck and humming softly, I forget how to speak. 

but sometimes, it's the only thing I know how to do. I'll lay still as death, clutching at the wispy smoke of a ghost, letting my words flow through her, talking in circles about absolutely nothing but her mouth, or her kisses, or her lush lavender scent. sometimes she'll talk with me, we'll pore over where she went, what she misses, which side of the coin it's better or worse to be on. 

after times like that, though, I always wake up. 

some well intentioned interloper will shake me by the shoulders, scream in my face with warm, moist air that feels thick with the living. 

"you're so cold," they'll say. "I thought I'd lost you," they'll say. 

you never had me. I was never here. 

I'm every bit the ghost she is, looking for her every where I turn. looking for a sign so I can cross over to the other side. looking for where I belong, looking for home. looking for my heart, sticky and bloody, beating haphazardly in the grasp of the girl who stole it.  she stitches together all its broken pieces with her sharp needle stare; she sews straight, even x's with words like "I need you." 

it takes a long time for wounds like that to close. 

but while I'm looking for a light at the end of the tunnel, I pull my ribs further apart so she can climb into the hollow space she took that traitorous muscle from. I want her to curl up where I can keep her safe, where I used to hide her memory, and let her keep mending it. let her hold my heart in place while it heals, let her sleep soundly where she belongs. 

which is, of course, with me. 

my beginning, my end. 

cravenly

When I sleep, I dream of her.

In my waking life, I swear to never indulge that kind of obsession again, to never fall prey to temptation and addiction and hallucination again. I won't do it, I won't bear the pain, or the loss.

But I do bear it, the worst of it, over and over.

I bury her every night.

I relive her death every night.

Sleep or no sleep, moon or no moon, I lower a cheap pine box into the ground, with numbers on it instead of a name. I throw a handful of dirt and rose petals on top. I say my goodbyes, quietly tearful some nights, hysterical and violent on others. I say goodbyes that I never got to tell her, and things I didn't think of until she was already gone. some nights they're hardly goodbyes at all, just accusations and insults born of confusion and hurt and lonely, lonely, lonely...  I trudge off, turning my back on the hole that my heart lives in now.

And then I wake up and the mourning is fresh. The grief is as raw as it ever was. Imogene, my Imogene, is a memory. A tri-fold pamphlet with an outdated picture and a poem I didn't write.

She's as gone as she ever was.

...which is to say, she isn't gone.  At all. Not really.

Now she's the wind that turns my hair unruly. She's the rain that runs slick down my up-turned face, dragging ribbons of mascara with her. She's the ache in my stomach.

She's a ghost, silent and cold, descending from her watchful spot on the ceiling in a haze of TV static. On nights I can't sleep, she settles on my skin like mist so she can weep into my pores while I lay there and stew. So she can gather in the corners of my eyes, pool in the hollows of my collarbone. So she can work her oppressive chill into my sheets and pillows, grind into my mattress with every fretful toss and regretful turn. On nights I can sleep, she lays next to me like a thick blanket of fog, watching my eyes twitch under their lids as I dream of her funeral again and again.

Why do you keep burying me? she asks. I'm right here, she insists. She walks next to me at the supermarket, sits by my side at dinner, politely requesting attention in her quiet, unassuming way.

I walk.
I chew.
I smile, swallow, laugh.

I'm the only one that sees her.

When she loops her icy arms around me in the middle of a crowded room, I stiffen and excuse myself to collect my bearings. It's difficult to hold a conversation with an honest-to-goodness person when the dead half of your soul is draped around you, nipping at your throat, begging for kisses. 

I often ignore her.  I more often can't.

When I'm leaning over the sink, staring at myself in the mirror through a matted curtain of snarled hair, she sits on the counter next to the tap and brushes it out of my eyes with cool fingers, just like she always did.  Sometimes the lavender is so strong it makes me gag, and I double over and spit things I don't mean across the faucet, watch things I do mean circle the drain.  She rubs my back and holds my hair to the side.  Sometimes I get fed up, and whirl on her in a fury, matching her coolness with a heat of my own.  "Why are you doing this?" I'll hiss at her.  "You're dead.  You're gone.  So just fucking go." Sometimes she just looks at me sadly and fixes my collar, tucks my bangs behind my ear.  Sometimes she opens her mouth to respond, but I can't hear her because somebody else has come into the room and asks me, "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

She's right in front of them, the most beautiful thing they could ever hope to see, and nobody sees her.

I do.

I turn the water off, pull my hair up, and check my face one final time before I turn out the lights.

I'm late for a funeral.

in matters of recovery, as with revolution, you either triumph or you die.

they say ignorance is bliss, and I had no idea until he plopped a wet lump of beige-colored clay into my hands. 

"mix," he instructed. 

I looked at the lump. I looked at him. at the lump. at him. 

"I beg your pardon?"  

sighing deeply and with a slight roll of those vivid eyes, he sat down and pulled me into his lap with him. his arms reached around to rip a small piece off the mass, and he worked it between his fingers, all the while staring pointedly at me. 

it was stubborn at first, staunchly maintaining its rigidity, but his hands were relentless.  I watched his knuckles turn white with effort, his veins slithered smoothly across trained muscles, and sure enough, the clay began to give.  the heat from his skin took the chill off the topmost layer and those determined fingers pushed it further in with steady, measured kneading.  before long, the piece had been heated through and ended its struggle. he persisted. not satisfied with just having warmed it, he continued until gave in to him completely, the toughness of the raw material reduced to... well, putty. it flowed silkenly under his touch, welcoming him so blatantly I could see the lines of his fingerprints embossed on the surface. 

I don't often feel kinship with inanimate objects, but somehow I'm sure I knew exactly what that clay was going through.  

...all the way up to when he gave it to me and wrapped my hands around it by covering them with his. now the damn clay was on its own, because I hadn't the slightest. 

"mix," he said again. 

under the penetrating eye of the art nazi, I timidly tried to recreate his movements, glancing up at him occasionally to verify that I wasn't making some drastic blunder that would cause the fabric of time to unravel and the world as we know it to cease existing. 

I looked at the clay. I looked at him. I looked at my hands, my shoes, my insecurity, I looked up and away. 

he never took his eyes off me. 

I had likened him to the calm before a storm in the beginning.  now the comparison suspended itself thickly in the air around us, saturated it like the humidity before Florida rain.  his eyes today were crystal clear, the waves shushed and stilled, their constant bombarding on my skin replaced  by the weight of his intent. 

I'd spent much of my life greedily  keeping myself from other people, and when I met her, Imogene, Imogene, my beginning, my end, I all but threw the gates open, practically kicked the fuckers down, and let the parts of me that had been carefully saved and preserved flood her. it swept her away. a twinge of guilt licked at my insides, maybe she drowned in it.  well she was gone now and it was gone now, the reserves emptied, and I was exhausted from expelling all that energy on such a tiny little thing.  she was little, too. frail might not be the word I'm looking for but it's the word I'm going to use.  sitting in his lap at that exact moment, the lump of clay cooling in my immobile, incompetent hands, something akin to all the secrets I'd been keeping snaked out towards him. it creeped past the gates that once held it as they drooped lamely from broken hinges.  right before it reached his sternum, he abruptly stood, and I went flying with all the grace of a politician's smear campaign. 

but once I steadied myself, I mustered the courage to look

back into that uncharacteristically calm ocean, and my secrets, at his level, stared him down too. 

he never took his eyes off me. 

they say you can feel a good strong storm brewing in your bones, but my bones felt like mush. instead the empty rooms of my recovering heart, where Imogene used to hide, echoed with electricity that rumbled in clouds I couldn't see.   the walls shook, reminding me needlessly that, pending background check and security deposit, we were open for another tenant. it had taken awhile, the last one had left the place in shambles, but it cleaned up real nice. 

the storm was coming.  I could almost smell it. 

a few blocks away, some two stories and six feet below us, a cheap pine box lay buried, stamped with numbers I couldn't recall. 

the ways i wanted her were innumerable.

the depths to which i felt her were unspeakable.

the things i wanted from her... indescribable.

because really, how do you say it?  how do you tell someone you love them so much you could die?  there aren't even words for the ways i loved her.  i could hardly bring myself to exhale because i wanted to do was continuously, fluently breathe her in.  it was like she didn't have enough skin to touch, like i couldn't kiss hard enough.  like i couldn't root myself as deep as deep as deep as i wanted to go.  i wanted to crawl into her bones and replace her marrow so every time her blood pumped it would be because of me.  i wasn't obsessed, i was consumed, and i wanted to consume her in turn.

now that she's gone... i'm starving.

and i'm tired, i'm so tired.  i can't rest without her soft breathing on my throat, i can't sleep without the warmth of her fragile body against mine.  the shallow rise and fall of her perfect chest, with its glassine surface and pillows of pure fucking freedom that waited for me, called to me, day in and day out, night after night after perfect, memorable night. 

i shouldn't be surprised that she's gone, because everything she did was like a memory waiting to happen.

every way she moved captured everyone around her, a flutter of angel wings waiting to be captured themselves.

captured by imaginations, by desires, by every wanting, wakeful eye that had the pleasure of misfortune of seeing them.

imogene was the kind of beautiful that broke your heart, the kind of beautiful that made you wish you were someone else.  someone better, someone stronger, someone more like she deserved.  but imogene, my imogene, my beginning, my end, she wasn't one to be predicted.  she deserved palaces.  her sweet angel kisses and her sweet angel sighs could tip the heads of kings, could have emperors craning their necks to hear her words.  instead she spoke to the degenerates, to the dregs of society, to me.

she had a smile like sunshine.  it broke through the clouds of whoever the fuck you thought you were and it warmed the coal your insides had become.  it coaxed and nurtured life from the impossible recesses of the jaded.  it melted the cold of all the years you knew before her and promised future, promised life.

obviously, it was a fucking liar.

because she's gone, and i'm alone, and without her...

i'm nothing.

NARCAN

I knew somewhere in the recesses of my mind that those were sirens.

But to me, each screeching wail was like a shot to my chest, the aching hollow thing my knees were drawn up tight into.  the delicate skin grew raw from heaving against an immobile wall of denim for God knows how long.

A young, baby-faced cop had knelt in front of me, stammering his laundry list of questions.  He was wet behind the ears and his green was showing, and my unresponsiveness only sent him further into awkward shyness but manners had escaped me at that particular moment. 

I was busy watching blue gloved hands roam her stretched out body, extend her arms, poke and prod that skin, that luscious silk that used to set me on fire. 

I wanted to sweep them aside and lay on top of her, I wanted to protect her fragile pride and maintain the strict physical barrier that she broke only for me.  The daggers from my eyes dulled significantly from having to break through a thick, blank stare.

"THAT'S MINE!" my thoughts screamed savagely.  "THAT'S MINE, IT'S MINE, THAT'S FUCKING MINE!"

Instead I caught my tongue between my teeth and bit down until I tasted a flood of rusty brine.

The calloused brute cupped her chin and tilted her face away from him, towards me.  She still looked absolutely perfect.  But when the tip of his stupid fumbling finger grazed the outside of her beestung mouth a squawk fled my throat and flapped away without my permission.

"She doesn't like to be touched!"  I was begging him, more than anything.

He looked up at me briefly and continued his inspection.

Her skin was like pallid rose petals and I swear I could see the clumsy fingerprints he left, dirty little bruises as proof of his invasion.  The more he handled her the more she started to look like bruised, old fruit.

I could see it in his eyes, that look I had met daily in my prison by the lake.  He raised one cynical brow, a little jerking motion upwards that said, "Just another overdose."

My inner voice screamed again, emphasizing each syllable like an impetuous child.

"SHE'S NOT A DRUGGIE, YOU SIMPLE FUCK!" I berated him.  "SHE'S THE DRUG, SHE'S THE DRUG!"

Somewhere in my hysterics, they had all filed out and I've been alone ever since.  However long that's been. 

With Imogene gone, really truly gone, I lived my life in stop motion.  In strobe light.  Every action a pose for a tragic, poignant still.

Oh...

The conditioning I had put myself through in the months leading up to now all fell to the wayside.  I slid closer and closer to the shadow of my old self, and I eventually began to slip through the cracks of it.

I wanted to slip through the cracks of the world to escape the cracks in my heart.

I wanted her back. 

Imogene, Imogene, my beginning, my end.

For some strange reason, I thought about the little side table we'd hover over together, cross-legged and smiling.  We drank and laughed as we let sobriety and the night and our clothes fall away.

I remembered how we used to lay on our backs, eyes closed tight and clinging to each other to combat the spinning of the room and whisper our promises again and again.  Now that I think of it, I don't really seem to recall her promising much of anything. 

But me... I promised the world. Several worlds, in fact.

I promised my flesh and bones, brittle though they were.  I promised my blood, the toxic sludge.

I promised to follow her from this life to the next and the next and the one after that.  I promised to find her again, in every form we might exist.  In every life. 

I'm pretty sure she at least promised to be found.

But now that she's gone all I find is that I'm a flip book of devastation.  Frame by frame by page by still of sad, sloppy heartbreak.

Me staring vacantly into the mirror.

Snap. (Flip.)

Me standing lonely at the foot of our bed.

Snap.  (Flip.)

Me with a belt between my teeth.

Snap.  (Flip.)

Me, unconscious with my chin to my chest.

Snap.  (Flip.)

It drives me crazy that I can't even say I miss her.  Because really, when half your limbs are ripped from your body, you don't fucking MISS them.  You grieve them, you mourn them.  You curse the motherfucker who took them from you and you loathe the sorry motherfucker you've become.  Fucking worthless.

Sometimes I sit in silence so long my heartbeat is deafening.

Sometimes I scream at nothing so long I forget I'm doing it.

Sometimes...

Sometimes I wish I had fed us both to that vulture after all.

As soon as I can gather enough breath to hold it, I'm going to go find her.

My beginning, my end.

My want, my wish, my world, my everything, MINE.

speechless.

something was wrong. 

i didn't know what, I couldn't put my finger on it, but something was amiss. 

I tried and failed to force my eyes open, sleep stuck in the corners and held the lids down. I unlocked the death grip my arms had on each other and attempted a stretch. the awkward movement was blocked by something, and a sheet of silk fell across my flushed, drool crusted face. 

Imogene. 

my eyes snapped to attention, the hardened glaze tearing the delicate skin and uprooting lashes, and I fought to blink back the moisture while I searched her face. 

and then the world ended. 

my world, your world, any world, it was over. 

her typically pale skin had a light bluish cast, her bee stung lips lacked their usual flush. her lashes, sooty feathers, reached impossibly far down her chilled stone cheeks. 

oh my god. 

oh my god oh my god oh my god. 

Imogene my Imogene my beginning my end. 

my want my wish my world. 

my everything. 

mine. 

I couldn't even weep. 

I wrapped my arms back around her and nestled my head in the crook of her neck. I sucked gulps of air in frantically, hopingprayingbegging for that lavender burn.

nothing. 

I had spent a long time hating the way she tempted me. I spent years upon years wanting something that was purposely out of my reach. I dreamt of her, I woke for her, I sustained myself on nothing but her scent and her taste for weeks at a time.  I flip flopped between love and hate, need and want, addicted and desperate to escape. 

but I always went back.  probably because she was always there. 

I built my existence on her. every fleeting thought hinged on her.  she was the questions I asked myself, and she was the answer to all of them. she was the problem and the solution.

she was like nothing I'd ever seen before. 

now that my arms circled her unresponsive waist, the lavender rush nowhere to be found, tears slipped from the eyes I no longer had a need for. 

drip, drip, drip. 

she used to be my morphine. 

drip, drip, drip. 

she used to be my muse. 

the beautiful, articulate ribbons of hot pink scars roping around my extremities... that art was for her. 

I pulled her closer thinking maybe just maybe I could pull her in.

my tears slipped down my face and into her hair, matting it messily on the wax paper her skin had become. 

Imogene, my imogene, my beginning. 

my end. 

my heart broke. 

it's called a "bump"

I don’t even want her anymore. 

Honest.

I don’t even know who I am anymore…

…honest.

I got out of Satan’s Care Facility and true to form, stuck with none of the love-sick promises I had savagely pledge whilst trapped in its unfeeling walls.  I even went so far as to fashion some sort of life for myself.  At first I would wander my apartment complex, slowly and methodically, not unlike how I imagined a ghost might.  I would trudge step after step, in and out of the moonlight, clutching at my losses and sighing all theatrical-like. 

Needless to say, that got real fuckin’ old, real fuckin’ fast.

Eventually I began testing my barriers, timidly approaching the edge of my comfort zone like a middle schooler at the Sadie Hawkins.  I toed the line here and there, pleased with myself for even being able to look at it without throwing up.  I’m proud to say that my radius, as it stands, goes as far as 6.2 miles out from my point of origin.

But the day came, as it always must, when disaster struck yet again.

I remember climbing the stairs to my efficiency, with none too much zest, flipping the keys onto the palm of my hand, then the back.  Then the palm of my hand, then the back.  My foot hardly hit the top stair when a sledgehammer hit me in the face.

Lavender.

And there she was.

Curled up in the corner, sleeping peacefully in the glow of the exit light, and looking too fucking beautiful for anybody’s good, there was my Imogene.

Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end.

Just laying eyes on her, being almost in her presence, I could feel the burn and swell of her scent in the back of my throat.  The heady rush of that sickly floral sweet spread through my skin and warmed every cell, throwing even my molecular structure into a riotous uproar. 

Everything that I had worked so hard to forget came springing back up, and violently.  Her hair fell over her jawline from the way her head was tilted, and I knew, I knew, I justFUCKINGknew that if I reached out and tucked it behind her ear it would feel like strands of satin, that her skin would feel like silk, and that she would adjust herself even in her sleep to tilt her face towards me and part her lips and sigh that little angel sigh of hers. 

And I didn’t even have to do all that to know if I put my mouth on hers what she’d taste like.  Which would be like lust and honey and promise and newports and want and life and oh…

Nobody could ever tell me I didn’t love that girl enough.  Nobody could ever say I didn’t want her enough.

In the time I spent standing there looking at her, watching her chest rise and fall with each measured, sleeping breath, all the emptiness I’d been running from caught up with me.  My heart broke for every single day I had spent without worshipping her.  My veins itched from every ounce of blood they pumped that wasn’t for her.  My mouth watered.

Imogene is the kind of beautiful that makes it impossible to stand your ground.  The kind of beautiful that rips the foundation out from everything you are and reduces you to a smoldering, stuttering, simpering mess.  The way she raises an eyebrow, a certain way she licks the corner of her mouth, little things that are more than enough to make you forget everything you ever knew before you saw her do them.  And happily, at that.

Ba-bump… ba-bump… ba-bump… ba… bump…

My want, my wish, my world.

My beginning.

My end. 

My Imogene.

And then I guess it happened.

After weeks or months or however long of treading water without taking a breath, I inhaled that lavender and dropped to my knees to put my head in her lap.

Ba-bump… ba-bump… ba-bump… ba… (nothing)

I guess I wasn’t so honest, surprise surprise.  I do know who I am.  I’m hers, like I’ve always been.

 hey, "FUCK LOVE", i want my $50 back.

They say the addict’s brains are  different than everybody else’s.

They say that once a brain tastes addiction, it is forever changed.

That’s the kind of bullshit junkies feed each other so they don’t feel so bad about being losers.  Because really, when does the brain taste any sort of experience that doesn’t leave it just a little bit different?

When I met Imogene, I was another person entirely…

I had a family.  I had a job.  I had a house and a life and a political stance, the whole shebang.  But I’ve tasted now… I’ve tasted love.  And not the kind of love you blind morons think you have, staging the same scenes with each other at Applebee’s, at Friday’s, in your stupidly decorated kitchens.  Over your poorly cooked meals.  Tucked into your lackluster beds.  No, you don’t know love.  It’s not until you’ve sold your heart and soul down the river, not until you’ve given every material and immaterial thing that was or was not yours to give, that you’ll know what I know.  People like you with your boundaries and your limits, people like you with your lines you won’t cross and depths you won’t sink to, people like you live their whole lives really believing that love like ours is made up and strictly in the movies.  Well, tough beat motherfucker because while you were busy placating yourselves with 2/$20 deals at Ruby Tuesday’s and movies that were made for the RottenTomatoes list, I went and had real love.

 Anybody who says love is patient or kind clearly doesn’t know diddlysquat.  Real love does not wait to be together and real love does not allow for past relationships or present circumstances or life to stand in the way of being completely and totally whole. Even if it means being what some might consider “unkind”.  That old saying, “Love is never jealous” is bullshit because real love will not tolerate being silent while someone takes up any part of its rightful attention and affection, real love does not play second fiddle and will not stand for sharing any sort of limelight from its intended. 

Oh no, real love is an animal. A beast.  An insipid soul-stealing harpy who would rather suck the marrow out of your bones and slit her wrists with the jagged broken edge than share you with anything or anybody.  And because she has your soul (the cruel bitch),  she is thoroughly and eternally irresistible. 

Love isn’t about sharing and helping each other grow, in fostering our individual natures.  Love is about becoming the same person, love is about tearing this weak prickling skin off and melting down into one beautiful shot.  Love is about giving everything you have over to someone else so wholly it was always theirs to begin with. 

Love isn’t about forgiving, it’s forgetting.

Love isn’t about the heart, it’s about the mind.  It’s a balanced rush of µd3 receptors flooding the whole damn thing.

Love is what put me here.  Love is what brought me to where I am today.  Love is what almost killed me.  But love is also what keeps this body going, heals these broken parts. 

And love, fickle bitch, is going to have a lot of fucking questions to answer when I get out of this shithole.

old habits die hard.

Needless to say, I am somewhat a creature of habit.

I got in the habit of Imogene.  I grew accustomed to her.  I had fastened her to my vital organs, bound her to each one of my thoughts.  And then she was gone.

So I got in the habit of being consciously devoid of her.  I grew accustomed to really feeling that lack of her, to really giving it life. I let the emptiness she left become its own monster.

When I was delivered unfortunately at redemption’s door, I got in the habit of feeling sorry for myself.  I grew accustomed to everyone tip-toeing through my door, afraid to upset the feeble, shaking frame of bones and bruises held together with misery.  Voices were rarely louder than a whisper.  If ever I were touched (which was unusual and infrequent) it was barely more than a brush, a graze. 

Change came bustling into my room today wearing Minnie Mouse scrubs and a ponytail.  And I don’t mean bustling so much as charging, with all the whispering tip-toe of a fucking freight train.

Her name was Dot.  Literally. 

Not Dottie, not Dorothy.  Dot.

Everything she did made a horrible, nerve-wracking noise.  When she washed her hands she turned the faucet to full tilt, letting the water crash like a roomful of fine china. She seemed to rip the paper towels as savagely as she possibly could.  And the rickety folding chair she lugged across the room to be right next to me… I thought I was going into grand mal seizure.  A short 30 seconds of her presence had managed to foster an annoyance akin to anger reminiscent of hatred.  It bubbled hotly under my skin, and all I could do was sit there and project it.  A shabby, shrunken skeleton propped up on too many pillows, scowling. I must’ve looked like a dollar store Halloween decoration.  On clearance.  The day before Easter.

Clearly Dot had the same idea because she laughed as she looked at me, a full-bodied sound that bounced off the tile floors and bare walls.  Imogene had a tinkling bell for a laugh, a gentle breathy sigh.  I missed it.  But Dot laughed with her diaphragm, snapping surgical gloves on with all the gusto of the mad scientist in a B-grade movie.  It only made me scowl harder. 

She grabbed my arm from my lap and extended it towards her while reciting the standard explanation of blood draw.  It shocked me to be handled, her grip was more than I’d felt in forever.  After tying the tourniquet too tight, she let one hand circle my wrist firmly while the other roamed my skin with experience and confidence.

“Actually,” I spat nastily, since my glare was having no effect, “I really prefer the latex-free equipment.”

She never removed the intent of her focus from scanning my arm. “You’re actually not allergic to latex.” Nonetheless, her hand swiftly rose to her mouth and she caught the tip of the index between her teeth, freeing herself from the Glove of Great Offense.  She kept searching until she found what she sought.

Now that her bare skin was on mine, the contact stirred me.  It reminded me of something I couldn’t put my finger on, and the simple feeling of warm and living brought a rush of tears to my eyes.  Almost like fire, almost like something I had felt before but couldn’t specifically recall…

Dot was already drawing at this point, two deft hands unknowingly encouraged more tears and her face peered quizzically at mine.  Very plain, I made a point of noting.  She seemed to be taking mental notes on me too while she filled the little red-topped blue-topped green-topped tubes.

“Why are you crying!” She exclaimed.  “God, with all the shit listed on your chart this should be nothing for you.”

There’s a particular way people ask “why are you crying” that’s less an inquiry as to the origin of tears and more “stop fucking crying”.  Dot asked in exactly that particular way.

“Well it hurts!” I sniffed like a wounded animal and turned my head with all the righteous indignation of a three year old. The way the fresh, red blood hit the culture liquid ballooned and curled, a cool smoky swirl of crimson clouding the muted yellow, looked just like adding cream to coffee, but on a different color scheme.

“Like I said.” She tape-and-gauzed me brusquely and I thanked the powers that be she was on the last step of her process.  “I’ve seen your chart.  You’ve clearly worked pretty hard to destroy your body, I would’ve thought you were used to pain.”

Who says that? My stone scowl crumbled to let my mouth gape open. I’m sure I looked like some sort of dying, flabbergasted fish.  “Has anyone ever told you your bedside manner leaves something to be desired?”

She laughed loudly again and let my barb sail over her shoulder, not even flinching from the razor sharp edge that I will have you know very nearly could have nicked her carotid artery and left her discourteous, insensitive ass bleeding to death at the foot of my bed.  Bemused and unaffected, she asked, “Has anyone ever told you that addiction is stupid and pathetic?”

After a quick glance into my empty bag of tricks and realizing I wore no sleeves in which to hide some, I knew I was out of nasty retorts.

“Look, you obviously had a death wish of some sort,” Little Miss Pleasant-pants continued as she finished gathering her supplies, “If I were her, I would’ve left you there. Jussayin’.”

My hackles were up as she tread dangerously close to the sacred ground that held Imogene’s shrine.  “If you were who?” I carefully prompted her to elaborate.

She was almost out the door at this point but she stopped and turned.  Her nondescript eyes narrowed, squinted at my moronic façade as though she couldn’t tell if I were serious or not. “The girl who brought you in to be treated,” she spoke to me like I was the three year old I behaved as.

“You know,” she said. “Imogene.”  She spun back around and disappeared into the busy world outside my room, leaving the static air inside it thick with pure shock.  I watched her ponytail swing wildly behind her as she bustled away from the chaos and destruction that lay around me in her wake.

And she was gone.

Dot.

What.

The.

FUCK.

drugs are too obvious... and so are you. 

In the time that I’ve been here, where ever “here” might be, I’ve slowly started coming back from the dead. All the work I had put into destroying myself is being reversed. My ribs looked less like the skeletal bars on either side of my bed, “to keep the patient from falling out” I was told.  They were more prison bars to me.  The hollows in my cheeks began to fill out, my eyes became less and less sunken everyday.  I had forgotten what I looked like with blood in my face.

I don’t even recognize myself anymore.

Imogene used to be my drug of choice, my fix, my score, my Betty, my skag. My beginning.  My end. My morphine drip.  Now they’re pushing actual morphine into me on the constant.  It blandly acts as a substitute, shushing my aching need for her, rolling over my desire and love like a thick, heavy fog.  I felt like a fucking traitor. They were slowly and systematically removing all the physical manifestations of my complete and utter heartbreak, and I was powerless to stop it. I hate knowing that soon, she’ll be gone completely. Every single trace of her eradicated. No matter how hard I try, no matter how desperate I am to protect her, they manage to take her from me bit by beautiful bit. 

I missed her more than anything.  She even stopped crawling through my skin, ceased scraping my bones.  I felt nothing.  I missed the scent of her on me. I missed the warmth of her eyes and the way my stomach leapt at the sight of her.  Imogene was so beautiful it was like she made everything exciting and magical.  Now that she’s gone, I find myself blindsided by the normalcy of life. I hate not having much to look forward to everyday.  I used to be so overcome with her, the need of her, the thought of her, thetouchthetastethesmell of her... I used to be so taken with her that I knew nothing else.  I was simply living and breathing Imogene and she was beautiful and I was beautiful and everything was just fucking beautiful. But now… now… now I had to feel everything I had forgotten about. I hate feeling everything to it’s fullest extent, undiluted, unfiltered by my obsession with her.  I hate having anything that's not her affect me.

If only she would just come back.  If I could see her, just see her one more time…  I know it’s gonna hurt like hell when she leaves again. But I gotta see her.  I have to.  I need to. Maybe to remind myself that she was real, that I had the loveliest thing in the world once.  And I had her, I really did. She followed my lead and mirrored my want; she was so forceful in loving me back, in needing me too, so ready to die by my word. And stupidly, for whatever stupid reason my stupid disintegrating brain invented, I left.  I started this tragic chain of events by taking the first step, and by taking that step right out the door.  I’ve never felt power of control like that in my life and I abused the hell out of it.  Because now… I don’t have her.  Now I have nothing.

I want to turn all the regret I harbor in my heart into a stone cold killer. I want to dispatch it through my body like an assassin.  I want to let it kill off my blood cells by the gazillions and snipe my organs out one by one, pick them off two by two, until there’s nothing left of me but a few gnawed bones and really, really great hair.

All I can think about is laying eyes on her again.  At the rate they’re going not only will I get out of here someday, and but I'll be as strong as an ox, too.  Restored to factory settings if you will, smacking of vitality and functionality.  Of "wholeness".  Of "wellness".  And all for not.  With a so much time spent awake and immobile, Imogene-free, I’ve nothing to do but think.  And what I think is I’m going to use all of the ridiculous goddamn good health they’re forcing on me to find this “Good Samaritan” and throttle the life out of him.  I’m going to hunt him down like the dog that he is for interrupting my plans to rot away.  For relegating me to a long, full life without the only thing I could live for.  And then I’m going to find that happy place in the dirt again and settle back in, continue on nothing but the want of her.  And that’ll be “all she wrote”. I swore I would die without her, and yet here I am, all the fuck alone and… eating Jell-O.

No, no, I have a plan.  I have every intention of keeping my promise, so when the vulture comes in and rasps “Who is Imogene” I clamp my lips shut and look out the window.  I’ve never felt so fiercely protective of anything.  Even hearing her name roll off the withered tongue of some ignorant wench makes me violent and vicious and thirsty for blood.  But I guarded her diligently, not a word betraying Imogene’s beauty by escaping my mouth and attempting the impossible task of doing her justice.  “WHO…” the acid-and-gravel persists, “is Imogene.” Everything a statement, nothing a question.  I don’t know if it’s because Bitchface thinks she already knows the answer or if she doesn’t really care what that may be or if she’s just hoping the mention of her will draw my concealed darling out in the open to be preyed upon.  But I’ll be damned before I let some scrounging hag damage and disrespect what is obviously utter perfection, or worse, greedily snatch her up and fly away with her forever .  Imogene never crawled through my skin anymore because I had hid her so deep in this diseased, malfunctioning heart.  Anything that would alert the people around me to her mere existence was locked up and away from prying words, from probing eyes, .  From the vulture's little minions.  From thieves.  From those that mean her harm.  It's like I'm driven to keep her safe, to protect her.  I'm keeping her all to my slowly mending self, and hopefully there will be something left of her when I finally climb back down into whatever ditch or gutter I was fished out of.

God almighty I missed her. She’s consumed my thoughts.  She hungrily swallowed every last ounce of love I had and moved on to devour my spirit. Now that she’s left me with nothing but empty, I want her to devour my body as well.

Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning.  My end.

I’m counting down the days until I can feed myself to my secrets.

leeches were once considered an effective form of treatment for most maladies.

A tall, gaunt woman with an unforgiving air and an unforgivable nose came shuffling into my room today. She was harsh and frightening, an unspoken threat.  Like a whirlwind she whipped about, returning the room to it’s pristine move-in condition.  The bear was tucked away into a dresser drawer, vases and vases of bloomed flowers with handwritten sentiments were pitched, notes and glass and posies and all, every sign of life removed and distilled until there was nothing left but electrical plugs and white.  She opened the blinds too far and the starkness of the room jarred my senses, shocking me into high alert.  The remnants of Imogene that lazed about in my skin prickled under my dressings.

She moved too quickly, causing my eyelids and heart to flutter with nerves.  Every step she took had a horrible scrape-and-thud to it.  Already of a more than respectable height, I suppose she didn’t need the help of an extra inch or two but these beige-colored, government-issue heels were of no help of any kind to anybody.  Maybe orthopedic, but I didn’t look that close.  If I did I’m sure I would’ve found careful, exact stitching: “Property of One Special Agent Dana Scully”.  They were the type of very practical professional female shoe that was built to deliver a good, menacing “clack” but she moved too quickly and awkwardly, she sort of dragged her foot in a fashion that made some horrible scraping noise instead, and a thud with the stabilizing of her step. She finally stilled for a moment, veiny, claw-like hands grasped together at her chest as she rotated, cold shrew’s eyes making sure her work was to her own satisfaction.  Finally she took the edge of Imogene’s rickety folding chair and drew it over the floor producing an awful screech and squeal, all the way from the wall to my bedside.  She perched lightly and crossed her legs at the ankles and to the right, keeping the knobs of her knees pressed together like they had a nickel between them.  She rested her hands on the heavily starched oxford cloth of her sensibly long skirt and sort of just cocked her head at me.  Like an inquisitive bird. 

Imogene went from prickling to hissing, bucking wildly against that which contained her.

I looked back, equally curious.

“So. What brings you in.” It was a statement, not a question, and her voice sounded like acid and gravel.

“A good Samaritan.” I replied.

Her beady bird eyes narrowed behind a nose that crowed for attention.  “You’re quite ill,” she stated obviously.  “You very nearly succeeded in killing yourself.”

I know this woman.  I know everything about her. We meet people like this all our lives.  Despite her aviary characteristics, light and flighty and seemingly frail, she was no sparrow.  Her eyes were too fierce, too black, they darted all over my face and rarely blinked. Thin lips either set in disapproval or spilled the rigid articulation of such, her chin jutted out with a pride that becomes very great ignorance.  Her body may have been slight in it’s build but it was efficient, tense and teeming with anticipation. It looked too thin, but in reality it was just wildly lean. The way she sat on the edge of the chair, elbows bent and hands resting atop each other it was as though she were ready to take flight at any moment, ready to soar up and come screaming down at me, streamlined and practiced, to dive straight into my mouth and down my throat and burst through my body, cruel wings flapping and dripping with entrails and victory.

She was nothing but a vulture.

“I suppose you’re right,” I answered her, looking to the lake beyond.  There were no fish jumping, no ducks to name. It was like they knew a hunter was near.

She stiffened, nostrils flaring as if she could smell the death on me already.  “So you agree, you tried to kill yourself.” She statement/questioned me without really wanting an answer.  She all but licked her pencil-thin lips as her eyes bore into mine.  I could feel her scavenger’s senses sinking through what I thought was impenetrable gauze, sifting through what she saw as my remains, sniffing out the smell of death in me somewhere. 

I let my head loll to the side as I kept my focus on the lake, willing my fishy friends to the surface.

But she was relentless.  It seemed like hours of rhetorical questions that she for some reason expected answers to, and no matter what those answers were or what varying degrees of truth they contained she received them skeptically, with raised eyebrows and a menacing twitch in her jaw. Imogene’s memory went from angrily rebelling against my skin to quietly shrinking further into my blood vessels. Those eyes, piercing and attentive, searched my person for something claimed by death already. 

Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end. I wanted to throw myself between her and the looming, imminent danger, but there was nothing I could do.  I laid.  I looked. 

This withered old vulture droned on, encouraging me to “release my baggage” and “confront my demons”.  The acid in her voice chided me harshly for my weakness, my addiction, my obvious aching need for that girl. But the gravel… the gravel in her voice was like dry leaves over the pavement.  It whispered to every nook and cranny of myself, every sore, healing cell that I had once devoted to Imogene but now promised to save for her as I waited her return. That gravel from her voice floated gently, if not quite comfortingly, over the empty spaces Imogene had just fled, coaxing her to come out. 

Imogene, my Imogene, I’ll never let them have you.

Ravenous old carrion, she played both good cop and bad cop all at once, she threatened my will while tracking down every last hint of Imogene with a hawk’s accuracy and a bloodhound’s resolve.

Imogene, my Imogene, my want my wish my world my everything MINE.

After what seemed like forever, the yards of oxford and starch straightened out as she stood abruptly.  She towered over my bed, leaning ever so slightly and blocking my view of the lake.  I hadn’t seen fish or fowl during any of the several hours she mindfucked me anyway, so I finally dragged my eyes out of their fixed position and locked them onto hers.  Her neck never bent. She stared haughtily down that monstrous, intimidating nose, challenging me to break our mutual gaze.

“…ba-bump…”

Instantly, her predator’s stare dropped to my chest, her brow furrowing as her sight bore down on me.

“…ba-bump…ba-bump…”

Suddenly and surprisingly, she relented. She practically smirked as she turned on her government-issue heel and shuffled out, pausing in the doorway just long enough to toss a cool “Tomorrow, then” over her thin shoulder.

And as she left as quickly as she'd come.

My chest heaved as I exhaled a breath I felt I’d held for hours.  A fish jumped in the lake outside. 

“…ba-bump…ba-bump…ba-bump…”

Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end. 

I slept soundly for quite some time, while memories of the most toxic, deadly thing I’d ever known rested safely in my failing heart, where I’d hid her.

I love putting on headphones and listening to all the saved voicemails and scraps of voice memos of her. Anything and everything I have with her tinkling, bell-like voice on it.

I love when I cover my ears with all that pleasant and it's like both teeny tiny speakers projectile vomit her angel noises until they clash at some point in the middle of my head. Injectible memories, but with volume control and a pause option and a beveled tip that never gets dull.

I love getting lost in the sound of her.

I love feeling like she's there but my eyes are closed.

I love remembering her.

I love how it always leads to dreaming about her, which at present, is the best I can hope for.

"Love, me"

When I woke today there was a plush, lavender-scented stuffed bear under my IV-heavy arm. And tied around its little bear wrist with a little pink ribbon was a note, "Love, me".

I love burying my face as deep into the polyester as I can get it, I love breathing in that floral hypnotic.

I love how hooked I have her, a barbed needle lodged in her skin just like she's stuck in mine.

I'm not sure what happened next, exactly per se. "Cardiac arrest", they call it. "Clinically dead", they call it.

When I came to again, the bear had been taken from my weak, sickly grasp just like she was. It stares at me sadly from a small bulk purchased dresser against the wall next to the bed. Just out of my reach. Just like her. I've abandoned the lake and its blissfully ignorant inhabitants in favor of my new bunk mate, its shining button eyes pathetically pleading with me to heed its only given instructions; "Love, me". I wish its furry little bear ears weren't deaf to me when I swore that Imogene is, in fact, the only thing I've ever loved. The only thing I ever will.

That sweet silly child's toy is the only tangible evidence I have of her existence, save the hot pink scars marching and healing all up and down my person, and they're disappearing. My heart's faint "ba-bump" slows and shushes just thinking about her, thrilled by the idea she had returned yet again, maybe even cooled my skin with her hand while I dreamt of her.

"Love, me"

Big sigh.

The very thing that rendered me too ill to sustain myself, while somehow managing to be the one thing that keeps this dilapidated body from giving out entirely.

"Love, me"

Oh I love you alright.

I love you to death.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP