#90

i can smell you in the hallway, just outside of the door. you are alive somewhere, miles away, but i cannot see you. you aren’t there when i can. you’re on the wall. you’re just past me. you can’t look straight and i’m the only one that can stomach it. there’s something grounding about it, someone you love reduced to a sedated animal, so weirdly human. i’m here now. it makes no difference. so many people have told me i’m a good friend that it starts to sound like just one of those things you say to console a crying child. back inside, i’m surrounded by your stuff, left mourning a person still alive. left making your bed and tidying your things. repeating myself and beating dead horses and sobbing so hard that i can only lay, body inverted inside-out, under his breathing ceiling. this web is shared and yet only i feel it like this. we took turns, me and them, them and me, comforter and comforted. in the car, in that room, out in the yard with the barking dogs. hair wet and sweet-smelling, throat scratchy. this will change something. nothing will ever change. in the light of the television, barely-there, i face your bed with my eyes closed and i try to find the back of your head, the way i always do. it almost works.