Conversations

You leaned gently and rest your head on my shoulder then asked in a loving whisper, “Do you even have a clue where you are.”

I was suspended in a temperate blue flicker of light. I was sitting back on the sofa in our main room. All the lights off and the quiet television illuminating us together as one. I raised my glass to my lips, held so tight in my unfaithful hand, and drank long and with appreciation. Then I held it before my vision, shaking, and looked into the blue through the deep orange and brown liquid in the glass. I drank again. Yes, I knew where I was now, and yes I drank all those drinks on my own.

You stood up, I did not know you’d left me until you crossed the television and emaciated the blue light of the room with your figure for a brief moment. I closed my eyes for a long time until the couch fell down and I was spinning round and round. When I returned I filled my glass again and looked to you in the kitchen.

“Sylvia.” The word felt like a prayer but probably sounded a moan. You can always understand me, anyway, if not my intention. You stood, arms crossed, leaning against the wall, beautiful and scared. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there. I was tied up in grading these essays.” They clothed the coffee table under my reclined legs, sloppily like uncoordinated patches of fabric.

“You were sick to the bone on the front steps of our building.” You did not move and held your stare. You were sad and scared. Sylvia, I did not know what you were scared of, and I drank the whiskey while you talked to me about why you were scared. Your voice was soft and controlled, and your words moderated by the noisy streets below.

I drank, hung my head to look down into the glass, and drank some more. “I’ll be alright.” I did not hear your response and after some time I looked up from the whiskey. You were standing at the kitchen sink pouring out my bottle. I was furious.

“Enough is enough,” you said calmly. The words were lies to me. No one is going to tell me when enough is enough. I tried to speak but I could not produce the capability of sense. You told me drinking doesn’t make me kind.

“I never wanna hurt you, babe.” I stood, hardly but I was on my feet nonetheless.

“There is a very obvious problem.” No there wasn’t. “It’s only one of us can think right now.” I couldn’t hear you. I lay down on the lacquered wooden floor. My life was blurry and uncontrolled as the temperate blue flashed before me. “If you keep on going you’ll be dead.”

I did not know where my drink was. You never once controlled me before, but tonight you had me cornered.

See now, I don’t understand. You say I screamed and forced you into tears like this. I would never dare. I was tied down, beaten down, and rocking back and forth in the whiskey and the cold, cold pain. I cried and cried later and you never once left. Oh god, Sylvia, this madness is my fault alone. But I’m not to blame, I’m happy.