across the darkness

Across the Darkness

Some people collect antique spoons they’ll never eat from or dolls too beautiful to play with. I collect moments that bleed into each other like a set of dollar store watercolor paints when a child adds too much water. I fell in love this way, you see—over a thousand intimacies strung as a set of pearls across eight Decembers. Intimacies are not always misplaced caresses or kisses in the rain. They can be the most detrimental of memories, and so was the time I tried to kill myself the spring that I was 22.
Across the darkness spun the scent of tar and oil as the woman standing at the gas station waiting on a drug deal began to scream because I was lying in the street waiting for a car to hit me. She was like background music set against dialogue. Only if I shut out everything else could I understand what she was saying; only if I shut out the hypersensitivity to the smell of the tar and the little pieces of glass that imbedded themselves into my wrists.
Like the series of moments in my consciousness, there is no clear cut transition between the moment I was pulled from the street and when I swallowed a bottle of 100 Excedrin Migraine tablets. I only smelled him as he fed me milk and I threw up all over his bedroom floor. The aroma of cinnamon and laundry detergent that wafted off his skin had always been my refuge. When I could no longer stand he lifted me as if I weighed nothing and carried me to the bathroom the way you carry a small child; like the color blue washing into red and becoming purple he washed the vomit from my hair. As orange was created I was soon wearing his exercise clothes because mine were soiled beyond wearing. With his body he held me down when the seizures began, frightened out of his wits and repeating something over and over about ambulances; but seizures and I are not strangers, and at some point I was able to tell him that ambulances weren’t necessary.Trim it down to size with a high priority device

Stronger than his arms, my soul drowned in the little specs of hazel spun like stars around his russet eyes. This is my soul’s collection: the curves of his face, eyes like constellations, the smell of his shampoo in my hair, the mahogany of his arms against mine of alabaster. I fell in love this way, you see. And the only color in which I can find myself, is hazel spun like stars around his russet eyes.