Waking up aching in parts that dont have nerves. My head was heavy from the weight of troubling dreams and I choose to stay in my beds arms than those of the morning, for just a bit longer, until my alarm finally maganged to pry me away. It was as if the strain of my sleeping thoughts were real and I felt the fatigue of running and jumping and hiding as well as all the other chores that my tense dreams demanded without giving the allowance of rest. The morning sun wasn't awake, why should I be? Doesn't seem fair. Finally, one leg after the other I pulled away and walked to the window to see what I was up against. Low fog and lower expectations. I knew that something was dwelling somewhere in my day that I was dreading so i closed the blinds and rushed around doing my daily doings, skipping over the anxiety, hopping over to the imagined ending of my day where I would once again get a chance to surrender to the sandman. This time i would pay more homage and hope for a better midnight showing.
Fully dressed, appropriately caffeinated, I realize my reluctance as childish. Stepping through hoops and demands I gain speed and catch up.
He texted at lunch, someone I used to know, but how we seem to change under times forceful grip. Faces become monuments, ambitions seem idealistic, jobs are a habits. I could sense the tone he once had, that was dryly comical and inquisitive, interested. But it was hidden behind a fear of rejection or indignation. He would joke and then retort and then leave a question hanging for days, dangling in thin air kicking its feet for a place to land. This is the frustration with texting. One can never get a true sense of the feeling behind it. Whatever happened to calling when one was curious about someone? I admit to lazily typing requests when I am not wearing the right face to have a discussion with someone, but something is lost in this bargain. That human contact so lacking in our society that guides us in our daily interactions. Thus his meaning is lost in the hush of a silent text in the afternoon and I am quizzically wondering why he even bothered. My head still dreaming about dreaming, I push it aside and decide to let him make that extra effort as I am far too concerned with shirking as many duties as possible right now.

I could smell the cold of the water as I toed the shore. Once again we were shoulder to shoulder, pushing, wincing at the inevitable. I figured I should do as the polar bear and jump. But it's so warm on my shore here, with him to hold me at night, with him that I know will be there when I am not wearing make-up or when I am broke or aching from the strain. The water out there rushes and turns and seems to want to escape itself. The tumult of it creates an anxiety that could also be named anticipation. The clouds above are dark and lazy, heavy with storm; heavy with the formality of precipitation: part of it's job. For me, for most, we call this a dark omen. I am sure clouds don't appreciate the bad rap. They continue to roll above and I think back to last I saw him and an instant weight is added, like the weight of water in the sky. I feel thicker, slower, and I just want to escape; hide in a day when I didn't have to remember someone lying to me. Someone denying me the simple human comfort of unconditionality...
He walked in the door of my small apartment with his head full, so full that any unrelated thoughts couldn't squeeze their way between the scenario that he created in his head. The elaborate cliche story that played through his head all night had so many matinees that it was real, a true anecdote in his autobiographical fiction. The tequila hadn't helped to clean the falsities or add any sense of reality. He threw some distractors into our greetings to play off his intentions, but I read them like I read liquor on his breath. I ask the question that didn't need to be and he answers with "where were you last night". Realizing the motive I reply "I'm sorry for not calling you back but I was still upset from the night before". I don't think he heard or cared or knew any other reality beside the one that lived and breathed and screwed in his version. He seemed to visualize with his eyes open, me on top of some other man. The pain seemed to stem from blistered pride than the loss of what we had. It was part of his story, not mine. Into the night two sides clashed, an endless stubborn war that no one would win; the ending already writ.
Something gone, or always missing was the only solution and like a key to a lock, this would never be right without it. So I slept with half closed eyes and restless laps swallowed my confidence. Laps around the warmth of together, the calm of forever. Laps through anger and alcohol and absence. When I woke up, he was gone.
So the shore and I are more familiar than I would like to be, that thin line that isn't water and isn't earth, that isn't one thing or the other, that thin fence I walk in indecision. The shore is safe from loneliness, the water, a torrent of the welcoming unknown. "Brace yourself"

I can't think straight with country music on. It gets in the way, like a friend gets in the way on a date or an absent apology gets in the way of forgiveness. So I sit in the silence and prevent the music from taking control of my themes. I think we have heard enough about regret and disaapointment. Something that we have beaten into our heads without us even knowing.
I sat in front of her house for a least an hour waiting for the courage. She knew and I knew but we both didn't want to admit it. As if the defeat was a sign of our weakness. The heater gave off a faint scent of new car, despite the fact that the car was almost a year old, because it was the first time I had used it seriously. The rain added to the tension. Each drop a punction of the ending. We had met on a rainy day like this. I remember my thin work shirt clung needily to my skin, dependent on my form for structure. Sometimes I actually began to believe I was like that shirt, needing her to validate what I was. But it was just a shirt, wet, cold and not doing it's job very well. The flashback ended I shuffled reality back into place.
In the private, warm bubble of my car I was immune to the cold and the anger that was to come. This bred cowardice and notions of nicotine and Jack. But by now she probably noticed my car and was waiting for me to come and deliver. The anxiety I felt was eerily similar to the feeling I had before I picked her up for our first date and I was reminded what utterly simplistic creatures we were. What other feelings had I confused? What situations had been determined by mislabeled emotional responses? How many moments were spent deciphering, seemingly blindly "How I feel"? My thinly veiled procrastination came to its finish as I saw her standing at the window of her apartment. She had that look on her face, like she was bracing, busily constructing a defense. She was good at that; creating a sound argument out of next to no evidence. She even left emotion out of it which always amazed me. She would usually cry after, when the hurt of it all came down, like when the parachute catches up to the grounded skydiver and smothers him, sometimes even injures him. Seems ironic now that I think about it.
None the less, I unlocked my car door and tightened my body for the water.