I walk back into your dark room

I fumble with the lock and they're light sounds

A green light flickers from the cable box and suddenly it feels like there could be something in the room

But there's not and it's okay

Your face is lit up with your phone

'It's late'

'I know'

it's only coming home that i notice it

taxi back to the apartment

its separate, maybe,

a clear demarcation from the loneliness

i felt in the spider infested rooms abroad

but home now,

phone enabled but still asleep

       i am alone

The calluses on your palms catch the skin just beneath my ribs

You’re sweating and my neck is cold from the dampness of your breath

‘Do you ever think about me?’

I turn my head into the pillow

The fan is on

I want the duvet but I don’t want to ask for it

‘Sometimes.’

‘What do you think about?’

‘I don’t know.’

I'm not good with people and usually I don't give a shit but when you look at me and you're upset it makes me wish I was.

             You told me I was important to you and that you don't want to mess this up and I covered your mouth because I thought I'd cry.

The last time I saw him he was high. I missed my physics final to be there and he wasn’t even at the airport. What got on the plane was something that was pretending to be him. The tears he was crying were something grotesque and fake and mimetic of genuine feelings. Crying to just mirror my own, a horrible perversion of something deliberately buried.

We couldn’t spend any time together and he wasn’t there so what did it matter? I was alone. I was alone for hours sitting at the terminal and I was alone for maybe days before. I could never tell. I always trusted him.

I don’t know when he really left.

I don’t know when his mind came back to him.

Earlier in the week I knew you were fucked up, your best friend knew you were fucked up. Your fucking arms were scabbed and bruised and obvious and you told me you were clean. How dare I accuse you of using again, I don’t know anything about what you’re doing, that I always accuse you of being a liar. Well, you lied to me. I found the pills. I found the bottles. I found the wrappers in the trash.

You made me cry, cry all the way home. Cry because I was worried about you and you were an asshole, a lying asshole. I cried and you accused me of being hysterical, said I had no right. I tried to sleep in your sister's room that night and I would have. I was disgusted with you then. But you told me to look at you after you had calmed down. You talked to me through the duvet I had over my head and you convinced me to look at you, slowly because I was adamant that you were an asshole then as I am adamant now. But somehow you convinced me it was alright.

Then you did it again.

You've been gone for three months now and we've been separated for one. I've been writing notes to try to remember all of the reasons to not take you back because sometimes I forget. Sometimes I see the hearts next to your name saved in my contacts and have to remind myself to delete them later.

You are finally good to me in my dreams and it's waking up from those that are the worst. Worse than remembering to not answer the phone.