she said loving me was like being caught in a tornado, struggling to find the calm in the center but also like being flayed by a thousand knives

the image caught me and i recognized the truth in her words, the solemn beauty of truth spoken like a razor blade against the wrist, knowing to cross the street to injure not follow the flow of traffic and kill

loving her was like being stuck in the desert, it was hot and uncaring and occasionally you had hope but it was a mirage, sucking the life from you in tiny increments

the image enraged her and she told me that she never wanted to see my stupid face again, she slapped me and blood filled my mouth but i just took it because that was how i was raised and she knew it

that’s fine i retorted,spitting blood into the sink and avoiding her eyes, it wasn’t and we both knew i was lying and when she finally came back to suck the life from me i would welcome her back with open raging winds and secret knives

we played this game back and forth, each needing the succor we could only find in one another, a game of pain made possible by weak will and inordinate self hatred

when she finally left, left for good that is, i waited by the door expecting to see her drift back, but she never did, she called and texted but i stubbornly refused to answer, to fall back into it like she wanted me to do, she wanted me to beg for her and i begged her to stop

she said she never loved me then and i saw the truth in it, i did love her and she knew the truth of that as well, we were not oil and water, we were kerosene and gasoline, volatile and dangerous near the open flame that was a passionate hatred and skimmed the lines of love

i quit her like a junkie quits the junk, by that i mean she raged through my veins and when my eyes were closed her face was all i could see her smell filled my nose and her taste on my lips, shaking and beaten by fearing the death it would bring i had to quit her

blocked her number, her father’s number, her mother’s number, her sister, her brother, her new number, the numbers she got off of Google voice, her emails from eight different fraudulent accounts, blocked and blocked and blocked and shed a pint of blood with every new attempt

i held my head up high thinking i was the better man, the stronger man, the idiot and the fool for ever thinking i could quit her cold turkey but i never drove past her house, never checked her profile and never once, maybe once or ten dozen times thought about crawling back to her

this loneliness was one i had fought for and against, wanted so desperately and could not tolerate in the slightest, the empty home, the dirty mess of an indifferent life, the sobs and aches and pounding head, they were my trophies of kicking an addiction that should have never been there, of a love never shared of a life lived in half measures and consequences to be bared

is she happy now, probably not, hers was not a pursuit of happiness, but of small moments of joy and picking scabs, of finding the soft spots and applying pressure in the most innocent of ways, needling until blood was drawn then throwing blame like bandages and hiding the real

when she pops into my head i try and not think of hateful things, of subtle jabs and revenge being a dish best served by being thrown into her face, it is fleeting, only for a second or two each day when the solitude weighs so heavily i miss the agonizing quiet of her ignoring my existence from a foot away

falling back into past routines is like following the cattle in front of you down the uneven path of odd angles and poor lighting, hearing the sound of the hammer but not fearing it because out of sight means out of mind until you finally round the corner and the hammer is meant for your forehead

that is not for me, though many an ex has tried to lure me back to the slaughter house, the knives and winds of my tornado not as destructive and all encompassing from a county away, the terror less as time grows from the last excursion, they call and ask if i remember the good old days and i do, but i also recall the time in the desert or on the glacier

i prefer the next great adventure, the tied to the ant hill covered in honey, or standing at the edge of the volcano, flames licking my shoes, the strapped to the front of the train as we barrel full speed towards the end of the line over the what was in hopes of the pain of a different demise