I stumble across the floor, broken glass clinking beneath my bare and bloody feet.  My clothes are strewn about the room, and retrieving them isn’t worth the further injury.  Clutching my shoes, I tiptoe to the door half clothed.  He’s still sleeping heavily, the drugs haven’t worn off yet, and he doesn’t even stir when I accidentally slam the door.  After a hasty search, I locate a crumpled shirt and put it over my bra and his jeans.  There are still a few glass shards in my feet, from what I don’t know.  Judging by the smell, I’d say a vodka bottle.  The whole night feels pretty hazy, and I imagine driving isn’t a good idea, but I feel a bone deep need to get away from that silent apartment.  I smell like sin. What happened last night?
   Mindlessly, I head toward her house.  She isn’t exactly a safe haven, but she’s the closest thing I have, and I’m more than a little in love with her.
   Knock knock.  Please don’t be home.  Love, please be home.
 She answers, looking like a goddess with her ivory skin and unkempt ebony hair.  Her eyes are taken aback but her tone is calm when she invites me in, though I see her watchful eyes take in the blood on my fingertips and my still dilated pupils.  But she doesn’t ask, and I don’t tell.  We never talk about the past, and rarely about the present.  We speak of art and movies, music, life and death, and nothing else matters.  Its a beautiful world we’ve constructed together, and reality shouldn’t compromise it.  I’ve been in love many times, but she’s different.  She is like a star in the heavens, unreachable, unchangeable, entirely awe inspiring.
   “Are you okay?” She asks simply in her breathy girlish voice.  I nod, and because for once I feel like there’s nothing left to lose, I kiss her.  It’s like drowning and flying and crashing all at once.  Her lips are pillow soft and part in surprise, but she doesn’t pull away like I feared.  Instead her fingers trail down my face as I tangle mine in her hair and we sink against the door frame, long pent up feelings venting themselves in this one sublime embrace.  I try to grasp each moment, memorizing as much of her as I can, feeling profoundly like this was my one and only chance to be this close to her.  Come morning, it will be as a fever dream.
   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 The radio crackles static and blues.  The notes slip through the smoky air like a call from a long forgotten past, floating across my skin to form lazy daydreams of eras gone by.  No one else listens to public radio anymore, it’s one of those quirks that makes me adore her.  She leans back in her chair, somehow managing to make her tangled hair and pajamas look glamorous.  The smoke from the joint dangling between her lips envelops me and my lungs fill with her exhalation.  My head feels light, but goes lighter still as she brings her face close, touching her lips to mine and making me inhale her hit.  The taste of her mixed with the high sends me almost reeling.  My consciousness seems to expand.  In this moment, this one sublime moment, I feel a strange feeling.  Euphoria?  I’m not very good at being happy, but when I am it hits me like a freight train, and this feels like two.  
  “Let me see your feet.”  She says, holding her hands out imperiously.  I’m embarrassed to show her.  I’m embarrassed about everything that had happened in the past two days, but she accepts it without comment or criticism, so I show her the cuts on my feet.  They aren’t too bad, really, but there are still a few shards embedded.  She arms herself with a pair of tweezers and sets to work pulling out the little pieces of glass.  It hurts, but I’m high enough to float above it, and she keeps up a steady stream of conversation to distract me.  We don’t talk about last night.  We don’t talk about that magnificent kiss or what happened after.  We just talk about the same things we always have, and I don’t care, because she’s still here, and that’s enough.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Somehow the world carries on.  I still see her, but we’re only friends.  She doesn’t kiss me again, and I’m afraid to push it.  Things in my life change and move but I can never get her out of my head.  We make photographs together and they turn out better than any of my other work.  Of course they are, even my camera is in love with her.  It must be exhausting to be so universally wanted.  We bar hop and get high and live life and everyone sort of revolves around her wherever we go.  Our friend writes a novel about her.  She hates the way he portrays her.  He sees only her darkness and I see only her light and we are both wrong and we are both in love with her.  And it doesn’t matter, because she’s in love with someone else now.  If only I could hate her for breaking my heart, but I can’t because she doesn’t know and I won’t tell her because I’m a coward or because I just want her to be happy.  She is happy, for the most part.  Happier than when I met her, her new love makes her believe in goodness again.  I can’t hate him either and we become friends somehow.  He doesn’t know about that night.  No one does.  Maybe it was all imaginary.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


We run through the night, holding hands like children.  Thunder rumbles on the horizon, and I feel the electric thrill of static in the air.  Her smile is as blinding as the lightning that crackles through the air above us.  A shiver of ecstasy runs down my spine as the skies open up and dump warm summer rain over us both.  Her wondering laugh rings out clear in my ear through the static raindrops and I shiver again, realising how close she is to me.
   “I’m going to miss you.” She breathes, and it’s like a punch in the gut.  I don’t want to leave her or this place where I finally learned how to let go of my mask and my fear and live.  But reality calls, and I already answered.  These precious moments are all I have before the train takes me home.  Only it’s not home anymore.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I miss her.  I miss her eyes and their quietly devious twinkle.  I miss the feeling of utter hedonism I felt around her.  We soaked up life with the raw lust of youth and love, with a mixture of alcohol and marijuana and joy and pain and desperation.  I don’t feel anything here but numb.  As numb as I felt so many times in my life before her, and it’s come crashing back as if the last two years of knowing her  were only a dream  She woke a magic in my soul I didn’t know I had and gave my art purpose and direction.  That is the gift I will keep.  That is the reason I will remember her.

That and one soul searing kiss.