like eating glass

Another story start that eventually got scrapped...

Blink once if you can hear me.

No?

Nothing?

Okay then.

I don't know how it ended up this way. Maybe I had put you up on a pedestal that was too far out of reach without the thick layer of drool connecting cheek to pillow, dragging you back down to the muck and mire that is my level.

Or maybe you just need to be unconscious for me to get a word in edgewise.

Regardless of the cause, here we are: only able to communicate in one-sided conversations after the Ambien with a gin and tonic chaser kicks in.

It's almost comforting in a twisted sort of way. Maybe because, with your eyes closed, I can pretend that they could open and look at me the way they used to.

But we both know that's a lie.

If self delusion could be packaged and sold, it'd put heroin out of business by Tuesday.

There was a time—how long ago, I don't really remember—when I honestly thought we'd go the distance. Although maybe that's what this is: a protracted limp to the end of the line.

And of course, it's entirely possible that I brought this on myself. All those "I love you"s I heard might just have been "like"s if only I'd bothered to clean the sappy Cusackian romactic bullshit out of my ears and listen properly.

We all hear what we want to hear...

Why can't things just be clear-cut for once? I mean, why can't I just dust off the scientific method and diagnose our malady and its underlying root cause?

Symptom A: My voice makes you cringe when it used to make your breath catch in your throat. Not always, but it happens. Kind of a knee jerk startled-down-a-dark-alley gut reaction that you think I don't notice, but I do.

Symptom B: You stopped laughing at my jokes and started looking at me as if I were a troublesome child. Or just an idiot.

Symptom C: Whereas once my indecision was an obstacle we both struggled to maneuver around, now it's practically a blessing since every suggestion or bold assertion I make gets shot down without a second thought.

Symptom D: I'm baring my soul in between your snores.

Back in my college days, I convinced myself that all the love songs flooding the airwaves past and present were proof that romance was real. If they wrote it, they must have felt it at some point, right?

Wrong. Because for every song about passion and bliss, there's another about heart ache and anguish—a hormonal ebb and flow that's got zero to do with legitimate human connection.

Of course, that's all bullshit really. Cynic that I am, you know as well as I do that I'm still a hopeless romantic. Like an existential tragicomedy—I believe in true love, but I don't buy into the idea that it'll ever be reciprocated.

Not for me, at least.

Probably should've seen this coming. Can you give your heart to another for keeps before having tried, only to have it ripped out, pissed on, and left for dead? How can you grasp what it is to be in love before your heart's been broken?

"I'll always be there for you. I'll never hurt you."

How could I have been so naive to think that a love defined by hyperbole could last?

I dunno if it's any good. Probably not, but this is: