Water in My Lungs

This is water on my face and in my lungs and no ground beneath me and no hand reaches to me and this is water in my lungs.

I swam. I longed for the current and the depth and the sway and pull and strength.

This is water in my lungs. Look, from the beach.

Look, from the shore.

This is water in my lungs. This is water in my eyes. This is panic. This is gravity.

This is weight at my feet and pressure against my chest and I ask what I have done to the river and the river asks why I make it choke on my bones and why I force it to swallow my legs and my arms and my chest and my face and the river tells me I should learn how to swim.

I agree.

This is water in my lungs.

This is panic in my eyes.

She.

"You're drunk," I say.

Marie and I are lying in bed. The warm yellow glow of the street lamp shines through the window and barely grazes the side of her face and her shoulder and her breast as I look at her, into her. She sighs and pulls closer to me. "Maybe, but it doesn't mean it's not, you know, a thing."

Her hand runs across my skin, down my side, my back, my leg. I can feel her breath against my neck. I can smell her hair. She lifts her leg and rests her thigh across me, the skin hot with release and inviting and her hand travels up my back. She kisses me and grips me with her other hand. 

"I couldn't, though," I say.

"Bullshit. You're out, after a show maybe, some bar or whatever. She's in fishnets and a short leather skirt. Curves and long dark hair and you have total permission? Bullshit. You'd be all over it." She kisses my neck. My chest. She grips tighter with one hand and travels with nails with the other.

I kiss her forehead. "I love you."

"Why are you being weird about it?" she asks. "I mean, you always want me to talk to you about things, and well, I am. So... I don't know, never mind."

"No, I'm sorry. I just," I swallow. "I didn't expect."

She kisses my neck and strokes where her grip was and I melt for her. I am whatever she wants. I am whatever she needs. I kiss her forehead. Her cheek. Her mouth. Years have passed and my heart still races for her. Still waits for her. Still craves for her. And then this. As if nothing.

"Is it a problem?" she asks.

Our kiss extends and between breaths I am only able to creep out single words.

"No...I...worry...Love...you..."

Her perfume is sweet and small. Not overpowering and also not subtle and she is a woman whose glance offers either hostility or sex and everyone thinks she looks bitchy and everyone wants to be near her and I could only breathe her in. 

"I know you do," she said. "But,..." her mouth is on me again. Her gripping hand moves forward and back and forward and back and only a few moments have passed since and already, with the conversation and the reaction, I am ready. "Tell me about her."

She bites firmly into my skin and her nails dig into me and she grinds herself against me and I wonder where I am now. What I've done now. 

For her. For me.

For us. For me?

"Tell me," she says. "Tell me about her skin," she says. Her nails scrape sharp against my skin and her teeth press into my neck and my spine chills and my skin walks and my heart races and I say;

"She..."

In the Kitchen, On the Counter.

In the kitchen, on the counter, I had a half bottle of gin. It was just before noon and what passed for light in those months crept through the window and wheezed and coughed and died on my bedroom floor. I laid half uncovered on my bed staring at the water stain on my ceiling. I had been awake for a half hour or so and was getting my bearings. I had no reason to get out of bed. It wasn't wonderful anymore.

I reached for my phone on the window sill near me. Email. Facebook. Texts. Two missed calls. 

I threw the phone into the closet.

Each day was grey and each day was cold and each day was another day of making the best of it and closing my eyes and telling myself; this is what we do. This is what we all do.

December never came as a surprise. My bones would creak and my skin would dry and my heart would sink and I would stare out the fucking windows as some acceptable death crept and dragged his fingers across the trees and the landscape and the people and me. 

I laid in bed half uncovered and the water stain on my ceiling was growing.

Another ten minutes passed and I got out of bed and I was getting fatter. I couldn't look down at myself. I covered it in a robe and walked into the kitchen. I poured a large glass of water and drank it and then another. The clock on the microwave said it was ten after noon then and that was perfectly fine. I filled the glass with gin and set it on the counter while I went to the bathroom to piss.

There was nothing for breakfast. I took the gin to the computer and sat down. The word processor was open from the night before and only two words had been written, spaced halfway down the page;

"What now?" 

I didn't know. I sipped at the gin and it was dry and sharp and my mouth wasn't ready for it, but I had already poured it so I swallowed a large drink down and by the time I felt it, it wouldn't matter either way. I deleted the words from the screen and thought that I would try again. 

Light shown like frames through the cracks where I had nailed blankets over the windows. I thought about running duct tape around the seams. I'd never remember to buy duct tape. In a few hours it'd be dark anyways.

I typed;

"In the kitchen, on the counter, I had a half bottle of gin."

I stared at it and I'd need a new glass soon. My stomach was empty and screaming at me. I'd order a pizza later or walk to the gas station at the corner and buy some nuts or jerky or a pot pie from the cooler. I had to type something worth a shit. I had to write something. I had to write. 

Nothing came. The gin disappeared and I felt okay after a while and the one line floated against the white screen beaming away in the darkening living room and my chair was uncomfortable.

I swallowed down the last of the gin. I wasn't hungry anymore. I sat on the floor next to the chair and thought I'd get a new perspective on whatever the fuck I was writing. I laid on my back and rolled on to my side and thought that maybe none of this was real and that maybe I wasn't alone. 

I have hollowed this place. 

I have hollowed me.

I keep waking up.