I’m waiting for something to happen.
For Evaline to come back.
For my heart to be content.
The sun disappears and moonlight shines through the window and into my apartment.
It feels nice to watch the stars come out. It’s nice to feel as if I am of no consequence. To feel that the moon and the stars will exist without my regard.
And still I live.
Stars keep disappearing from the sky.
The sun keeps aging.
Everything keeps moving.
Here in the past, waiting for Evaline, I know that she won’t come back for quite sometime. But somehow I’m finding a comfort in knowing that she will indeed be back.
Someday.
And my eyes grow heavy.
I sink into my old chair.
I flutter in and out.
And then it’s no longer yesterday.
But I’m still in my apartment.
My head feels like it’s going to split open at any second. My eyes slow to a dizzy sort of spin that seems to tell my body that everything is not going to be all right.
Because this isn’t my home.
Because this, at one point and time, it was my home.
And there’s a shaking to my gut as I see my old place worn down by someone else’s life.
My initial thought is to panic. To Run. To leave it behind.
But I don’t.
I sit down on a couch that I never would have bought and I think about how things used to be.
They’re thoughts I can never seem to escape.
It seems that all I do is exist within my yesterdays.
And the sound of my feet tapping the floor reminds me of the loneliness I would feel. Sitting next to Evaline. Watching TV. Waiting for something to happen. Waiting for my heart to explode.
But I wasn’t lonely, was I?
We fought and fucked through every inch of this place. For hundreds of years we wore this place to the bone. And then we would rebuild.
We would always rebuild.
I miss her.
Her memory.
Her skin.
Her way of existing.
And I know it’s locked in my head.
But somehow that’s never going to be good enough.
I miss feeling frustrated to the point where I’d jerk off into the toilet and go to sleep early because all I wanted was to feel her skin against my skin but all I ever got was a shove and a dirty look.
It wasn’t like that, was it?
A pause.
A breathe.
I’m waiting for something to happen.
Nothing happens.
And so it’s a nervous twisting of nervous fingers, because I want to remember her for all that is good. And suddenly, I feel like I’m remembering her for all that really was.
My head hurts.
I’ve got fingers that try to shake their way off my hands.
I need to walk.
I need to get up and out of here. Away from all that this is, or was.
And my heart is beating up my Adams apple as I stand to go.
I pause and there’s a feel of static.
Evaline comes and goes from my vision.
I shake my head.
Blink.
Try to stay in this moment and out of that moment.
I start towards the door.
Look back.
Look to the spot where she first told me that she was going to die. I was so disinterested. I didn’t know.
I didn’t understand.
I still don’t know what it means.
To die.
To lose someone.
And as I stand there lost within my wreck of a brain, I hear a jingle outside.
Keys.
A voice.
Another voice.
Feet shuffle.
The doorknob turns.
Someone once told me that 99% of our actions are based on fear.
Fear of love.
Of losing love.
Of living.
Of not living.
The door opens. The couple, the tanned, pulled and peeled couple with skin that looks like plastic hanging off a skeleton; they pause when they see me.
They’re unsure of how to process what they see.
Me.
A stranger in their house.
In their living room.
This doesn’t happen.
This shouldn’t be happening.
I’m just as shocked to see them. Because they look like we did. Like Evaline and I. When we were together. When nothing was changing. When everything was comfortably the same.
They look like Evaline and I when things were nice.
And then the lady, her face pulls and shifts. It bunches and twists. I watch it change in a surreal sort of fashion. And now she’s looking like Evaline.
She is Evaline.
Though I know she’s not.
The man next to her. He remains the same. Staring at me with a slack jaw.
I’m staring back.
My head starts to hurt.
