MOre OLD Writing

Kelly Wilson

Essay Two

�A Night�s Rest�

I always thought in the shower. It was the one place that was mine. In that place I was practically porcelain, or at least I thought I was. I figured a hot shower would do me some good, but somehow it didn�t soothe me as it always had before. It was different, it made me feel ugly and almost chemical. I was overcome by the water as it grabbed onto my body. I stood there under the scalding water for minutes and lost myself. I was there, my whole body pressed against the small tub, the water steaming, and my breathe seemed so cold and dead in comparison. I was smaller and handicapped by fear of filth that would surely greet me when the shower ended and water stopped cleansing me. I was not sure I wanted to be there but I was not sure that I did not want to be there either. I wanted to breathe that steam. But I didn�t just want to breathe it in, that was too simple, I wanted it to be warmed inside me, made inside me and then exhaled from my body so I could feel a warmth that wasn�t artificial, that was my warmth. I was cold, I was weak and my body was wrinkling, if not from worry then from harsh water on my skin. I know I was curled up in the tiny porcelain tub for a while. The exact time escapes me as useless concepts often do. I kept feeling the heat of the water diving onto my skin, abandoning my body and sliding off down the drain. So it seemed to me I was letting the water down, as if I was supposed to nurture it before it combined to form the long stream of water that fell into the drains. It was scalding me, leaving my skin red and irritated but I felt that I should save the drops and keep them from a death and mass grave down the rusty drain. I was holding myself responsible for this genocide of public water. And then I found myself alone and simply holding myself. The strangest part was that I wouldn�t let myself off the hook for such an evil and vile thing, and then I started to think of you.

You left me, you ran just as the water. I see you as a rat abandoning ship, but at one point I thought you were human. But I was human. Both thoughts were misconceptions. Had I noticed anything about you and tried to understand you, maybe I would not be cowering in this shower, lingering in a possible grave alone. I was picturing what my body would look like bloodied and dead on the white porcelain. I wondered if you would clean around me. But then after thinking such morbid thoughts I turned off the water and got out of the shower. As I walked through the apartment I remembered our bed or in the very least I remembered the sex.

We had shared so much and now looking at it we did not really share anything. You never wanted to get others involved in your life. At first I was alarmed to know that you did not want to talk about almost anything, but then I got used to it, or at least numb to it. I thought a guy like me was doing great in a relationship based on a �don�t ask don�t tell� theory, but it wasn�t great. I felt it to be my job to tell you that I loved you, even though we both knew it was not true. I mumbled those words in-between my �oh God� and �yeah, more like that� when we were having sex at night. One night I rolled over after a quick orgasm and I knew something was different but I felt it unimportant, after all I got what I wanted and went to sleep. You were gone the next day, only your clothes missing, and I felt I should miss you seeing as how I was the one who drove you away. But I really didn�t, or so you told me.

�God, I love your legs,� I would say to you when your legs were wrapped around me. They were beautiful, not perfect but incredibly beautiful. I can still remember them squeezing my torso while I looked at your crooked smile. I loved that smile. I loved your body. I told you that so many times although I hardly remember them now.

I let you sleep. Now, thinking back, I was only doing myself a favor by �letting you sleep.� I was selfishly hoarding my mornings and for those brief periods you did not wake up quickly I walked around the apartment and pretended to be alone. On those days that I was alone I walked around freely and pretended that I was completely alone in the world without parents, without you and even without friends. I liked that world better. In that world I smiled. Then you would wake up and we would look at each other and my mind let go of the daydreamed thoughts. I walk around the apartment now out of habit and I still stop imagining that world once I get too deep into it. I know your not here to interrupt me, but I still expect it . The closer I examine this imaginary world the more I see how it does not resemble my life, except for being alone. And now I can�t blame you for my dreams not coming true as I always had before because your gone.

I go over the night we met in my mind. Everything seemed so perfect. You were the most beautiful one there standing at the restaurant bar. I can still see it and I can still feel my body tell me that I needed you. Your eyes, they were always half shut. We didn�t dance, we didn�t buy each other drinks I just asked you to come home with me. You walked two feet in front of me as we exited and acted as though you did not want anything from me. I opened the car door and you got in without so much as a look at me. We pulled in and you appeared to know where you were going when you got out of the car. For the few months we were together everything occurred in this way. But the sex was great.

I still think it was the sleepy eyes that drew me in. I knew she was thinking of being at a better place, of only letting herself half exist in this world. She didn�t care what happened to her here because she had an entire world to fall back in. If she just opened her eyes once maybe things would have been different but I wouldn�t tell her that because we didn�t talk that way to each other. We only talked that way to people we had to.

Maybe those are the only things I miss about you, but it feels like that is enough.

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