I woke up slowly that morning, without a start, as if the creeping of realization was actually slowing down time. My body ached and my head, my head was reeling. I recalled vivid images of the night before: the bars we went to, the friends we saw, and a specifically strong recollection of a brief and unpleasant phone call from my boyfriend.

I felt sick, I was sick. It was not only the amount of alcohol I had consumed the night before, but also the weight of the arm wrapped around me, the arm holding me close, connected to the man whose body was lining my own; his chest hair slightly brushing against my back, his beard itching my neck, his breath softly warming my cheek, and his manhood, proportioned accurately for the size of his ego, was pressing against my bare ass.

This fine male specimen was not my boyfriend.

He was a friend, a friend who had a girlfriend of his own. He had taken me home and suddenly became something more. In one fell swoop, I had gone from girlfriend and friend to cheater and mistress.

As he pulled me closer into his spoon of sin, I became more and more sick. Never before had I wanted to simultaneously freeze and flee. I wanted to scrub the infidelity from my skin, peel it off like a bad sunburn and watch it as it washed down the drain.

How does something so primal and natural get coated in so much filth? How can desire override every other sense in your body to leave you senseless and a terrible person?

I finally sat up. My partner in sin rolled off of me and woke with a smile. I wanted to knock the teeth from his mouth. How could he not know that there are places in hell for people like us?

I got out of bed without saying a word. I slid into my jeans, pulled on my shirt, and hoped to avoid potential looks from my roommate. Anything she had to say to me, I was already feeling. Any look she could give me would only amplify how much I hated myself.

I had no time left to get to work. I left my house of lush and lust and did not look back. I convinced myself I could never go back home again. If the universe had any ounce of pity for me then I would fall into a manhole on my way to work and disappear forever.

With every step I took at work, a small weight pressed down on me. Each customer that walked in glanced at me and instantly realized what I was. They immediately saw my sin and hated me for it, as if a plague had been placed upon me and “CHEATER” had been written across my face in bright red letters.

Finally it was my lunch break; I couldn’t take it anymore. My betrayal was seeping through my pores. My boyfriend had been calling me all day. As my phone vibrated in my back pocket my heart sank deep into my stomach. He had no idea what I had done the night before. He had no idea who I left in my bed. He had no idea who was loving me last night.

I sat and stared at my phone. I willed it to make the call for me. Or for an earthquake, wildfire, tsunami -- any disaster really, to come and wipe me out. Any of those things would register the phone call I needed to make a irrelevant.

He answered the phone with concern and regret. He was sorry about our fight last night. He did not want us to break up. He wanted to stop our fighting. To make things work. That was when I broke it all: “Something happened last night …” and the rest was a blur. All loud and unspoken. Details were shoved into exclamations. Pleas were laced into curses. There was nothing and everything I could say. Every word that tried to place itself on my tongue tasted small and everything I once was to him was now insignificant. All the terrible words you could think to describe something despicable, he threw them at me and I let them hit me like a boxer giving up a fight. And when he tried to tell me that he loved me, I was finally knocked out.

I put down my phone and I started to cry. I was a coward with a sex drive. And there was nothing else I could say, nothing else I could do, but wait to be forgiven.

I waited up for you.

You weren’t late. I just felt like I should.

What if one day you choose not to come home. On the long bike ride home you meet a new girl and you follow her home.

I am waiting up for you to slip up.

Because if you come home really late. Drunk. Smelling like another woman then I can pick a fight. And maybe in the end there won’t be a reason to worry anymore.

But you walk in the door. You bring me snap peas and kisses.

Tonight you come home.

If I get drunk today, then can I forget about tomorrow?

Or would you let me just sip on my happiness until I can make it real?

You weren’t mine, but you helped me forget.

And now we’ve managed to cut through every degree of separation.

Or maybe those just never existed in this small town.

Or I shouldn’t exist in this small town.

Now my sleep and wake have become too similar

Anxiety has manifested itself as a plague

Chasing me out of sleep and wake

leaving me on the ledge of insanity

I am teetering

soon to be falling

soon

to

be

crashing.

Maybe into you.

Maybe into a convenient stranger.

Definitely into something worthless for a while.

I fade in and out.

I am a drop of dye in a tall drink of water.

I swirl,

And burst into clouds.

Then I dissolve.

And everything is a touch blue.

This isn’t about you.

It is about disappearing.

It’s about the slow dissolve

and the lift away.

I lift away.