I don’t know how I came to you, maybe like a ghost, all fuzzy and plucked out of context and ringing your doorbell at 3 in the morning. There you were: a raised eyebrow and an apprehensive mouth telling me it’s snowing. I nodded and told you my feet came to you, which seemed like a valid reason for this accidental ambush. Right, you said, but you were still paused in the doorway wondering if the ghost should be allowed in. It didn’t happen exactly like this, you know. I really never know how these things happen with you, because you always say that it can’t happen again.
But then it happens again.
And then it happens again.
And then it happens again.
I probably didn’t give you time to think. I probably walked right through the cracked door and slipped out of my scuffed black boots. I remember this: how you stepped backwards, repelled. I remember you had your fingers behind your back as you leaned against the stairwell and watched me unravel, taking off my coat, untying my scarf and laying all the pieces of me on the bench by the door. You pointed at my knee, you’re bleeding, you said and we both looked down to inspect the scraped gash, the red trail on the hardwood floor. I don’t remember falling, I said. And you sighed like you didn’t have a choice, like you never had a choice, and you led me up the stairs and into the bathroom. You’re ridiculous, you told me as I propped my leg up and into the sink, like a clown. Or like a situation, I thought, one you believed to be preventable but you found yourself in anyway. You placed a wet rag to my leg and I pinched my nose. Honk, honk, honk, I said, and you laughed and I felt momentarily absolved, because it takes two people to be funny, and here we were, two people, in a funny, preventable, ridiculous situation. Exactly, you said, exactly like that. It was New Years Eve, but you and I were exactly the same. You, one side of a flipped coin, tossing all the responsibility to me every time I land, face down, heads up, with you inside me. You opened the drawer and took out a few bandaids, not picking up the glittering pieces as they fell to the floor. I don’t think you’ve ever taken me seriously, I said as you pressed the latex to my skin. You think I am something happening to you, not something you chose. I didn’t say that second part, maybe not even the first part. But I remember silence, the forceful kind after something shatters, after a bone splits. With you I was all bone; brave, kind, evil, careless. I remember how right then I knew it in my bones: I was never going to see you again.
and then it happened again.