Why I hid inside the silence...

I took a mental snapshot of the skin on my forearm. It felt like it wasn't mine. I could tell I was coming down. That arm was numb, having laid all night propped up on it, writing in my journal. I was sitting in the garage passing the cigarette back to you, as we had finished the weed. It was time to go. We needed more coffee. I shivered.

Wait. Let me explain it this way. It was the champagne cork, when you haven't finished the bottle and you stuff it back in, knowing the champagne will go flat anyway, but what else are you supposed to do?

Tibetan monks make intricate mandalas. With sand. Each grain has its own specific place for the purpose of the perfect finished mandala. And when they are done, without even really bothering to admire their work, they wipe it away. It was getting light out. The first irreversible stroke across our sand. I spent all night making this mandala.

I spent all night in the car singing Breaking Benjamin, in Linda's drinking cup after cup of coffee, in bed writing line after line of worshipful observations I made while I watched you play guitar. I can still smell the summer air easily. The sweet rotting smell from Lake Saint Clair. The road slick from dead fish flies.

It was Sunday now and I was coming down. My jaw was sore and my skin was pale and parched. I was in that in between state where the adderall wasn't really keeping me up anymore, but I hadn't sunken down into depression yet, maybe because you always made sure I smoked enough weed so I wouldn't get sad. You always took such good care of me. But it was Sunday now and it always seemed to fall apart into Monday and I was at the title agency again answering phones and updating files. I'd try to catch the clock at 3:11 just so I could be the first to text, but you always beat me. I forget sometimes, how much you loved me. You were the coolest person I had ever met. And you loved me. We'd spent all night moving tiny grains of sand. But it was Sunday now and we were going to Linda's and then you were taking me home.

You can never understand. That moment. Sitting in my driveway in your car saying goodbye to you. It was a knife thrust so ruthlessly into me my sternum split open. I have always hated saying goodbye to you.