DaylightLover

He thinks of her. Still.

© Photo my own.

He thinks of her, still.

The box-dye hair that reeked of crushed aspirin filled him with equal parts longing and dread. He’d met her when she was unwell and should have waited 48 hours before falling in love, but couldn’t. She had that quality, that knell that went with the swaying of her fat come-here hips, that filled you with a sense of faith in humanity. That turned the insides of his kidneys to charcoal dust. That insistence of permanence that didn’t — wouldn’t — suffer him to wait. On good days, he decided to want her all at once, except it was no decision at all. This woman was his desert. His perdition. Fate.

This woman who made him crawl about on his elbows and left his knees skinned like when he was a boy. If he could’ve chosen at all, he might’ve wished for an easier woman. It was a lukewarm, nice enough fantasy that ended up disappointing him each time. He could no more be satisfied with a woman like that, a wishy-washy woman, a paper-clip woman in the deluge that was his life, than he could hope to be happy with her.

It wasn’t happiness his witch from the desert had promised him. It was dry-lip kisses and flickering streetlamps that kept him up at night.

He thinks of her often.