Free Write

At night you still come to me, but not like before. You break into my head wearing a masks but I recognize your clothes. I recognize your clothes because they're my clothes. They are my clothes you refused to return to me, ill fitting and awkward. Too loose around the hips, too short and your ankles are left open, white socks in my face. White socks. God, you know how much I hate white socks, always dingy and greying, always brown spot stained and loose.
The mask comes off and I know its real – there it is, your face, your pair of lips, all sugar and bite and bile. And I wish that I could hate your face, your tongue – for a moment I do. I scream and curse you and tell you to get the fuck out of here, get the fuck out of my world, my head, my home or land or country or wherever it is I'm floating through today.
And you do. You run. You run fast but I catch you. I want to cut out your throat so you never lie again. I want to cut off your arms so you never wrap yourself around a woman and tell her everything is going to be all right – at least, never again. The biggest part of me that hates you is the part of me that longs for you, long like you, skinny and lean and taut and young and tall.
I catch you but now I can't remember why I was chasing you in the first place. To spit your face? To curse you a few decibels louder? I don't know. You've got your nose to the ground and we're arguing. You're telling me I kept your nose to the ground. “Do you know what its like to walk around like this?”
And maybe that's my biggest fear – that you blame me. That you think its my fault that I'm caterwauling crazy now, that I'm some sick succubus like the girl in that movie we saw in the theater last fall. Am I? Am I sick?
Get out, I say, again. And it's like this these days. I want to think about anything but you, want to know anyone else but you, but when its midnight and there's a pair of jeans pressed up against me all I can think about is your skin and how electric its always been. You were always so warm in my hands, carved and stretched to my exact specifications, it seemed.
“What good are you now?” I say. “You can't even wear your own clothes. Its pathetic.” But you aren't listening. Like so many days I'm here again, droning on and you're barely nodding, barely thinking, just all hollow and still. I climb on top of you and scream in your face, as if loudness could do the trick.
That's when I realize it – my position is weak. I can't be hear, can't be doing this. I'm trying to force you to listen but all I can feel is your skin on my skin. Fuck. It's still electric, still humming, still begging at me. I still know every curve and line and motion. “This isn't what it seems,” I don't want it. I don't want you. I fight it with every inch of my bones.
But you come back at me. I've pinned you down but its really you that's on top. You see me slipping, like soap out of grimy hands, like an earthworm off a hook into a clever fish's mouth.
You move, but only in the best-worst way, as I scream no, we can't do this, I can't do this, not again, not after everything. I can't want you anymore. I can't want you anymore.
But I do, and I wake up ashamed.