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Why can’t you stay?
He won’t say it with his mouth. He won’t need to. His distraught eyes will do all the talking. They nearly draw you in again but you turn away. Resolute. You won’t spell it out but you don’t need to. You both already know the answer.
Because it kills you to be with him.
Every time you feel it just a little too much. Every time you hold his stare just a little too long. Every whisper without promise and every touch without claim — everything, everything wears you down to the bone. And even though, by now, it’s a pain you’ve become accustomed to, grown numb to, learned to wear like a second skin, it’s still wrong for you.
He’s wrong for you.
You carry him home. Why? He isn’t in any condition to walk or even stand straight, for one, but also…you aren’t in any condition to be alone tonight. He doesn’t need to know that — he probably does.
His damp nose presses into your chest and an incoherent stream of mindless declarations spills from his loosened lips. A sober man’s thoughts. Well, perhaps, if it were any other man that would be true. But you know him. You know him so well you might as well meld into the same, fucked-up being for all it’s worth. It’s the separation of your stained souls that keeps you trapped in this endless vortex. You know this. So does he.
It changes nothing.
You move to place him gently on the bed and then, even though you really shouldn’t, you do. You linger. You wait for him to want you there, to need you, to show you his soft underbelly. Helpless as an infant, crying out for you, unable to survive without your love. He glances up at you, bleary-eyed, and in a rare moment of clarity, you catch him in the act.
Wanting the same of you.
Your entire lives have been a steady stalemate of unspoken demands, unheard desires. So why? Why should it be any different now? You’re eternally ensnared in the wicked web of your intertwined existence. You’ve made your bed, and so you must lie in it. You can love him from afar and you can love him from a breath away, but you can’t love him in a way that will last. It’s the paradoxical price you pay for loving him at all.
Shallow breaths ghost across your tightened lips. You don’t need your tongue to taste the vodka — or his indecision. You lie there, languid, with limp arms incapable of letting go. You lie. Again and again and again. Until the truth is a distant memory from an unresolved timeline you only experience through chronic deja vu.
Why do you stay?
You’re not sure who asks the question this time but it hangs between you, like the ephemeral glow of the moon, on a deep, dark night.
He already knows why.
Because it kills you to be without him.