With the last breath of a dieing cigarette on her tongue she fell asleep. A different kind of sleep, she didn’t dream. She slept alone in the silent darkness of her room, it was okay though, when she was in the dark it wasn’t as easy for her to get lost where she was going when he found her it was easier the light was brighter and the dark was even darker, he was her teddy bear, her knight in shining armor. But for the time being he was a memory.

***

Sweat rolled down his chin, another punch in the gut and he wasn’t gonna come back up. This is what his life flew into since he went away, if only it was easy enough to get her off his mind. Another right hook, this kid was fast. Faster then he had ever been. She wasn’t here to tell him to stop or that fighting was dumb. All he had was the reputation and the fights. This was pointless. He landed a shot on the kids temple and he went down. The group of admirers cheered as he bounced off the opposing boys chest with his boot. In a moment of blissful victory, he thought he smelt a Newport being lit from somewhere in the crowd.

***

Doctors shuffled around her throwing warm beaming smiles that cheered, “don’t worry I wasted half my life in med school” at her that made her sick to her stomach. It made it worse that she was smiling back. He would have had something funny to say about this whole mess. But the phone stayed silent as a man in a coffin six feet underground. It was cold really, the way the doctors all acted the same way. To everyone. No one was special, even though he had always been special to her.

***

He didn’t care what the girl next to him was saying. This didn’t matter, this date didn’t mean jack s*** to him. She was cute, but not as cute as his Shelly. She asked him on this ‘date’, he didn’t want to come out tonight, or any other night here lately. He missed her but everything remained dead, he hadn’t had his phone on him in weeks. God, was she still talking? He gave up really listening to her incoherent babble an hour ago. He kissed her because Shelly was probably off somewhere, with someone new. Someone better then he was.

***
She didn’t want to kiss him anymore; he was clumsy, cold and clammy. She missed the cute way he would try and hold her hand while he worked his mouth around her neck slobbering obscenely as he went about ‘kissing’ her. He must have thought from the phony groans she was enjoying it half as much as he was. She wasn’t but at least she could pretend it was Mike and maybe that was enough.

***

Notes off his guitar died into the silence of the night, and the broken, empty room he called his own on the tip of his tongue was her name. As well as the bitter truth that it couldn’t possibly be like this, could it be ignored for so long? He could only drown out the thought of her with music, instead it only brought the thought of her closer. As horrible as the hurt in his heart was people told him the pain would fade away. He wasn’t sure he wanted the memory of her to fade away, without taking the pain too.

***

This is how she held him close, when she took another hit off the pipe. She let the smoke start to take her away, from the agonizing loneliness that held her cold and unforgiving to the grip of reality. Where he wasn’t there and how it felt to be without him.

***

He didn’t care about it when he was drunk. It was easy to let go of it and the only thing preventing him from falling over and blacking out for the night was the voice mails she never left, or the screams from the house next door. Life was dull without her, nothing felt like it was whole.

***

A joke that’s all it was to her as she paced down the hallways that held onto her memories like wretched angry hands that tried to suffocate her with every breath she tried to take. Where was he? How lucky was he that he didn’t have to put up with her nonsense, her bulls*** that she constantly shoved down his throat. He was better off with someone who would love him better, that wouldn’t argue or fight back.

***

To even see her would be enough right now he knew that he couldn’t take another day like this. He didn’t want to be without her, it wasn’t manly, but he keened every night that he didn’t have her in his arms.

***
It was lonely enough that she was 1,000 miles away. But it was worse that her face was every where, he couldn’t look at an ad, a bill board, or a magazine cover without seeing her small heart shaped face, with a gorgeous white smile.

***
His voice haunted her every day, her only, and he was gone. It couldn’t end like this it just couldn’t, could it? In movies it always ended the same. They were always together, that’s all she wanted was to be with him, to be held in his arms. To have him love her again.

***
She was online maybe he could talk to her, no he was going to;



call her if he would only start,
calling her it was ringing oh god I hope she picks,


up? Now after so damn long he wanted to,



scream her name again just praying that she answered to hear him say,
“hello” her voice trembled as she picked up and heard him say,
“I love you” he said.

"I know” she said.

***