This isn't about you

There was a time that I began to believe that there was only so much of my love for you left, that because you weren’t generating it anymore, or maybe it would be me who generated the love for myself, whichever, whatever, that every memory and thought of you used up a little bit of my reserve. That this reserve was quantifiable, a thin, blue viscous fluid in a sac somewhere inside me, perhaps behind my lungs, maybe in a hollow space in my pelvis, I did not know. Inside of me somewhere. And once I believed it was in there, I found it was impossible to not think about it. It's impossible, absolutely impossible to not think about something. I could only forget about you long enough to forget why I needed to.

And fuck, fuck, if this reservoir exists, if this is true, I wasted so much of it in those first few nights with my cold bed and hot tears and the trying to convince myself that if I could just fall asleep, just close my eyes and slow down my thoughts, you’d crawl in beside me whenever you got back from wherever it is you’ve been. Where have you been? I’ve convinced myself you will return, with a new story about what happened at the traffic light, maybe you'd have a new t-shirt from this week-long convention you’ve been at, actually you'd probably just pass out and wait till morning to explain. Where have you been? I leave my door unlocked and it sickens me. I wake up alone, maybe with a little less of that clear blue fluid, maybe with none at all, maybe there never was any. I shower, and watch the water drain from the tub.