january 19th 2024

at 10:47pm you called me twice. i was violently high, two coronas and half a bottle of malibu in the hole; you called me and for three minutes i did not see. my phone did not ring, and i was distracted, lounging in my negligence on the carpet with sofia and her friend. i did not see and then, suddenly, your name on my lockscreen— two, why two? and then before i was conscious i was moving, i was escaping to the hallway, and then there was panic, and i was calling you, calling you. please, please. 

“There are some days from which it is incredibly hard to get up. My throat is closed shut;

airways dried out by a snake wrapped into itself,

tail and mouth become one.

Hear it hiss.

Each breath I take

only angers the serpent,

tightening like an old brown shoelace.

It is rough and it chafes my skin.”

i thought, you devil, you knew about this day. you waited until i had given up and let go, had sunk my mind away. did it plague you, that day? in its dreadful approach, did you recall another time? the first time? a crosswalk, a crossroads, a message in frenzy. january eighteenth: there must be a reason.

where were you? you were not with petra, she was drinking alone. you were at your girlfriend’s, then, because there is nowhere else. i considered you then in some corner of her studio above the tremont starbucks. maybe she was gone or maybe she was there, were you in an argument? did you fracture, steal away, remorseful— did you think of me when that which you’d sacrificed for was lost? she is leaving you, there was never a future, and then there is my name, and you could not bear it, and you called for me. oh hadriel. is this how it happened?

i held my breath under the electric hum, mocked by the slowness of the dial. you did not receive me. i called twice again. hum, silence. i gripped the countertop to keep myself from falling over. silence. in the mirror i studied myself, my manic eyes catching the overhead light. i could be an animal. 

“I imagine that

I would just drip warm blood,

and the rope’s unfathomable grip would loosen.

I lay suspended,

my soul’s fire truant,

my thoughts are a warbling marmalade

as each moment stretches and twists and shrinks and snaps and boils,

the great droning groan of the universe echoing

in my empty mind and its clouds move subtly across my vision.”

so, an accident then, that is your story. tonight, not a reason; twice, not a reason; my blocked number, accessible only by search, but there is no reason. of course. i can see: she found you snot-soaked and said, we’ll always be. two years, how long is two years? then you will have her. it will be a good one, and now you can breathe.

you wish i would die. you are sorry. you wish i would die. 

“I hear raindrops when there are none,

relics,

probably,

from another moment:

Time,

she’s a fickle bitch.”