i am always the one who calls

i had taken care of her for days (weeks? months?). feeding, washing, holding, coaxing, listening.

she was wearing my underwear, my tank top, my socks. she was in my bed, with my pillow, my comforter. her eyes were stained red from crying and healing and crying some more. i couldn’t look at her like my lover. she was, at that moment, a child. i just couldn’t take care of every part of her at once.

i could not heal the things that bad men do. could not heal loneliness, the unbalance of chemicals, the hunger, the years of nausea-inducing self hatred. could not make love to her.

she needed me to be the weak one in public. needed a pretty baby to fawn over. to tell her friends and her enemies that she would be taking me home and making me beg.

she needed to turn my most painful strengths into weaknesses.

and when i walked into my own room, to find her still in my bed, living all over me - she used the last strength of her exhausted body to pull me ontop of her.

before things became so tangled... i had wanted this. before i knew her, i had wanted this.

it wasn’t her desperation for love, for a home, for an escape, for care, for a persona that turned my stomach. it was her desperation to turn me, another woman, into something small and pitiful.

it was not enough to merely keep me from being the strong one - she had to turn me into the weak one... and i was not willing to stick around for that.

she still wonders why i don’t call.