Lime Rind

This isn't even the beginning.

So I rolled into him as my heart broke for the second time that night. It wasn't even midnight and I lay in the arms of one man in the bed that I shared with another while my heart broke and broke again until I couldn't breathe. He said Breathe because I love you. He said Don't love me because I'm fucked then something else that I can't remember. He said try not to love me the same way that I am trying not to love you. The fumes coming off him made me gag and I tried to think of how much I would have to drink to raise that kind of a toxic alcoholic stench. Lime rinds. His skin smelt of lime rind and I still can't push my thumb into a mandarin without feeling his arms across my naked back.

It was supposed to be a dark night with the fragments of my heart poking holes in my lungs and the drunk man trying not to love me trying not to drink trying not die and my seven year lover drunk somewhere in the city, crashing on someone's floor, someone he called Clara. But his arms were around me and he said Breathe because I love you. Breathe because I love you and even through the fucking dead set shit soup of my life I drew breath against the warmth and weight of him. I breathed because he loved me.

I'm not sure how much stock to set by the pillow talk of a suicidal alcoholic in the middle of a bust three weeks out of rehab. I'm guessing it shouldn't be a whole lot. But what do you do if your brains just connect? What do you do if you can't sleep for weeks and weeks without the touch of him? What I did was wait. Wait and wait and wait and then he busted and drank so much that he wanted to die and that's when I gathered up his pieces and stacked them naked in my bed, then I lifted the sheets and climbed right on in next to them and pushed myself as close as I could be and they spoke. They said I am trying not love you and I clung to the man I love until the other man that I love phoned and said I'm not coming home. I thought good because there is another man in your bed until I noticed how pissed he was and how he slurred and I know enough to watch through the phone the slant of his shoulder the way his left foot will be slightly forward, his eyes wide and blue and his face making the same face he makes when he fucks me. He said You know Clara don't you? I'm staying at her place, she said I could crash there. And fucking snap. Where my love sat imploded and I blackhole hollowed out until all the unheard screams rushed through me and I lay there in the arms of another man while hyper-speeded sorrow eroded the edges of my blown out chest.

The man I love, the broken drunken one in my bed said, I love the way you hold me. I said I want you to feel safe. He said Is it safe? And I said Yes, here it is safe then he ran his hands across my back and pushed one under my oldest t-shirt and up my back and around the side of my breast. He said It's definitely not safe and he was kissing me with such restraint, so slow, asking so many questions. And instead of ripping off my Disney pyjama pants and my purple supermarket underpants and pushing him down and swinging a leg over and grabbing his cock and shoving it as far in as it would go and fucking him as hard as I god damn could I said Things are already hard, let's not make them harder and I pushed my head into his chest and clung to him wearing my oldest t-shirt and Disney pyjama pants from Big W, ten bucks, while my fucking vagina pulsed and pulsed over the empty where his dick should have been.

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