Home is wherever I'm with you

"She got sunset on her breath now, I inhaled just a little bit. I got no fear of death now"

Candy red nails, chipped around the edges just how she likes it. She bites onto her thumb, showing just a little bit of teeth unwrapped by her lips. Thin and pink, they stretch out into a smile as her brown eyes catch me catching my breath. She bats her spider-leg lashes and winks with one quick almond crease. I grab her hand and kiss it flat on the back, mapping out her veins and cartilage under my lips. She pulls free and rolls down the window, a tangerine light blinds me momentarily, and then all that's left are her denim shorts and red sneakers, the rest is outside the window, reaching for the bloodred sky.

The Letter I Owe You.

She remembered the first time they fought. Not even a year together, but she fought like a rabid animal who was struggling to survive. Blinded by hot tears, indecipherable curses chattering teeth, choking down air in between screams. Her fists attacked him with such strength that he had to grip onto her wrists and shout at her to stop in between his own ashamed sobs. He knew he was wrong, but he was a bad person then, and chose to lie to cover up what he had done wrong.

She remembered the days that came after The First Fight. Daily lilies, milkshakes, turkey sandwiches, some of her favourite things. Her materialism and young heart betrayed her and led her straight back into his arms. She wished she could have warned herself of what was waiting for her in 4 months time and the year of fighting that would follow after.

Exactly 2 years and 3 months later, she realizes that she hasn't spoken to him in eleven days, a new record. It was clear to her that he had given up, too. Maybe it was because he was sorry, and knew that she deserved better. Or maybe he realized how serious she was when she said she was done. She liked to think that it was because of her ... but he probably just grew tired himself, and didn't want to drag it on. She wondered if he was happier now, with the freedom to do what he likes and not hurt anyone.

She refused to reminisce more about the pain and thought of all the reasons how she knew she had done the right thing by saying goodbye, finally. There were no flowers outside her door this time, no more flood of apologetic messages and phone calls, or little gifts as there had so abundantly been in the past. Not even an attempt to say sorry. Just silence. And although she wanted to see him fight for it, she also liked how easy he was making it for her to realize she had made the right decision.

Yes, she missed him. But all good things come to and end, especially when they're corrupted by mishandled trust. She didn't want to be mad at him even though he hurt her terribly countless times, but she thought of all the things she still had yet to say to him. L'esprit de l'escalier, the French called it. How she would tell him how stupid she felt for letting him treat her like that so many times. How disappointed she was that he promised to change but still did the things he used to. How scared she was that she wouldn't be able to get over him and move on. How angry she was at him for making her feel like she was never enough. And how much she still loved him. How they had 1130 days together. How the past 365 were the best days of her life.

It wasn't all because of him, she admitted to herself. She caught herself looking outside the car window more times than actually talking to him as they drove through the city. She caught herself asking him for more and more favours, until she just expected him to be there for her, waiting for orders. She caught herself thinking "is there even a future here?" while he spoke he to her. And worst of all, she felt so many urges to ask "What are you doing with your life?"

She thought about writing everything down in a message to send him. Make him realize what he's done, make him feel the gravity of his actions, but the words just wouldn't make sense on that little digital screen. She must have composed at least 30 different messages to write him, but none of them made sense. None of them held even a fraction of the feeling she was trying to convey. So instead of sending him that long message where she would declare all her feelings, she composed a much simpler one, instead.

"How are you?"

After all, they hadn't talked for eleven days.

I don't really want to know what's good for me

"We're all going to die anyway, what's the point?" she said, hair sprawling over my notebooks, cigarette burning between her skinny spider-fingers. "Work, school, family ... can't believe those things still exist"

I hated her cold, controlled way of laughing at things that are supposed to matter. Her strange life of living with no parents in her messy apartment was fucked up to say the least. An apartment she barely sleeps in, for that matter. I used to ask her why, and it was always a shiny story lined with glitter that started with her getting high for free and ended in that empty apartment. Of course, she would always be too drunk or high at the end of the night to realize she was all alone on her bare mattress. She would just fall into a heavy sleep, numb beyond control, wake up sober, get ready as quick as she could, and rush out of there as if she didn't want to realize that there was no food on the table, or someone to greet her good morning. I knew that as much as she joked about family not mattering, it hurt her inside.

"I don't understand why you won't let yourself be happy,"

She simply sighed, as if I was not worth the breath she could be using to inhale her cigarettes, and smiled. A pitiful, condescending smile that made me feel like a five-year old who had just been scolded.  She pulled out her extra cigarette from behind her ear and lit it on the edge of the one she was already smoking.

She turned over onto her stomach, faced me dead-on. "God and I just don't get along," she whispered, staring at me with those vicious brown bear eyes. They were old, and experienced, and welcoming death. So out of place on her young face and so obviously witnesses to something I had never seen.

He was gone.

After years of chaos, the storm finally left along with him. But even the stillness was corrupted.

He didn't have a place here anymore, so I scratched him out of my life, like tabletop graffiti when you didn't do your best. There was a problem, though: His leftovers. The memorabilia that sloshed through our three years and spilled over the brim of our breakup like contaminated water. I couldn't take seeing them. It was like he labelled his name all over my life- especially my bedroom.

I ripped the notes and photos and letters from my walls, the clothes from my hangers, and the bears from my bed, leaving a spray of thumbtacks, clawed closets and lonely pillows that still managed to salt my wounds.

I grabbed his remnants and stuffed them in a shoebox- also from him, collaged in polaroids and pink crepe paper. I laid them to rest in their cardboard coffin and buried it in the farthest, darkest corner under my bed, away from sight and mind.

I thought that I would be okay, but they haunted me still.

4AM nightmares of nostalgia: Our ghost scratching my bed frame. A skinny finger tapping the back of my head as I try to sleep, calling for me to take one last look at the life I was attempting to erase from my memory. Your hand on my knee, your kiss on my neck, your laugh in my air. It was like a corpse under my floorboards- rotting and stinking, and so evidently there. I squeezed my eyes close, tighter than the grip you said I had on you, and evaded the thoughts like I was running through reckless cars on a highway.

But it was impossible. Sooner or later, I knew I was going to get hit.

Nightcall

He was silent, both hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead into the orange glow of the city streets. I held onto my elbows, kept my head straight, but couldn't stop my peripherals from watching him. Silence, a game of second-guessing and over-thinking.

I could smell his cologne faintly under the thin blanket of cigarette smoke embedded in his shirt. A simple silver watch gleamed on his wrist, ticking louder than the vicious rain outside. I wondered where we were going, if he had something planned or if he just likes driving at night. We were getting farther from the city, and I wished I hadn't agreed when he asked me if I felt like heading out tonight. I was perfectly happy in my bed with a book, when he mentioned a "drive" I expected conversation and maybe some scenery. Not a silent escape to God-knows-where.

I felt nervous, like we were going to rob a store and throw the money out on the highway, or get sickly drunk and sling the bottles into Church windows. I pictured us, casually walking into a convenience store and asking the cashier to give us everything he's got. Intimidating, but sexy. The cashier wouldn't take me seriously at first, but he would pull out the gun and lay it casually on the counter. The cashier would probably get a little angry, but we'd keep our faces straight, maybe a little smirk here or there, and ask one last time before we shoot one of the liquor bottles on the back shelf- that would teach him.

I snapped out of my daydream. Was I the only one noticing the thick silence? I wanted to slice into it and set free all the conversations we could be having. Why was I nervous? How was he doing this to me? I hated his cool composure and his stupid jawline, and I hated my mind for wandering and thinking of stupid robbery daydreams.

Finally, the car slowed down. The bright lights of a convenience store portruded the darkness like blood from a fresh cut. He stopped the car and looked over at me.

"Lets go."