When karma comes to get me and we line up all my sins like the leftovers of a garage sale, I'm going to owe you an apology. You rode in on a white horse, but it was a bad horse. It bucked and bit and, foaming at the mouth, carried you down a blind path to an angry, ugly place. You'll be glad to know, I got my turn in its saddle. I'd like to think, in doing so, I bought my forgiveness. But does karma reward stupidity?
There was a June evening you may have forgotten, when we'd known each other five minutes and you cried because you loved me. Those words are a dangerous toy for a child who's made sport of less. I never considered where I would go. Only assumed something would save me. And there you were, beating the housekeepers and locksmiths by a week. The minute you offered, I'd made up my mind, and my continued vacillations were just foreplay.
Your apartment was beige and perfectly clean. An indie rock IKEA set. The white sun through the blinds made it a little like death. And indeed, death surrounded us, insisting that we not use the laundry room after 8pm lest we interrupt the funeral marches hummed under the breath of all the apartments down the hall.
Though I worked and you didn't, I was there alone for interminable hours with the haze eating away at my brain like a sweaty comforter over my head. I played the air conditioner and read in silence. Bukowski began to feel like eating dry spaghetti for something to do.
When I did leave, it was for days at a time, giving vague reasons and pronoun-free itineraries. Those times, I was happy, and I trusted you not to disturb the corners of your home you'd doled out to me. My demons wondered what you'd do, anyway? Throw me out? You were clearly fool enough to invite me in. Like a polite but vicious vampire, once you allowed me access, my mission was to suck you dry.
You gave me things, cooked for me. Sometimes you complained about money, but only when I was at my most sullen. I complained about it constantly, while dreading the hours I spent at work even more than those I spent alone in your grey, dead apartment. I pushed for the big bribes. Thankfully, you were too smart for that.
I looked for apartments the whole time, but only very slowly came to realize I needed one. You were leaving, and with you went my festering immobility. I had slept in until I was no longer tired, but had become so lethargic from being prone that getting out of bed became impossible and gave me a headache. Then I looked in a mirror, became violently ill when I saw how I hated the two of us, and scheduled my departure.
I can't remember if you were sad to see me go. Only that you were angry after I left. I remember sitting on the couch and lying to you. I remember a mad rush down the marble staircase that left me convinced I'd broken my arm and a telephone nurse consoling me that it wasn't very funny.
I remember you fuming in a faded bar. I remember the phone call I got that night and the "Fuck you" I deserved, the punctuation at the end of a suicide.
Two years later, I raised my stupid hand in the air and offered half my bed to someone I'd hated five minutes before. I didn't know him any more than you knew me, but you can see the scar where he moved out. So I got mine.
And, anyway, I'm sorry.
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