Collide  − 15 June, 2007

I crept away from an unstable homelife one night and hid at a former girlfriend's for a few days. Her family (which was just her mother, being that her two younger sisters were in Canada for the summer) was hospitable and inviting, and it became easy to forget that I was a refugee cast from my own home like the human garbage that I so felt that I was.

We slept, watched movies, smoked, and talked about everything that had happened to us since we'd last spoken. Time collapsed around us and soon it seemed as if we'd never been apart in the first place. I fell back into old patterns like I was pulling on a glove. Truthfully, I couldn't quite remember why we'd broken up in the first place. Reasons and painful memories sat like dusty books in the back of my mind, discarded and unused. Of course, they always came inkling back into focus, determined never to be completely forgotten. I was determined, however, to keep a jaded past from causing me anymore anguish, especially when I was enjoying myself so much. Sometimes it's frighteningly easy to do just that, I've found.

A night passed. As the second night came on dark and chilling, we found each other in the darkness, the sex like an old friend that had been waiting for us. Why were we doing it? Was it my idea? Wasn't it usually? No, not all the time. The air between us was a flurry of rapid breaths and heat, and sweat grew like crystals across my brow. The room was so hot, getting hotter every second. The smell of her skin and the feel of her lips consumed everything, and I was pressed into another world, one where we were merely a pulse. I squeezed my eyes closed, my breath freezing in my lungs. I was bursting into flame; I was being burned alive in a puddle of sweat and aching muscles.

My heart tapped out a runaway melody in my head, delirious and frantic, and suddenly I was a speeding car that meets its end in the form of a brick wall. A thousand thoughts and memories swelled in my mind and I was overwhelmed as they burst, surrounding me with their ruin. I lay there with her, gasping, throbbing and covered in sweat, my eyes still closed. I felt my body slowing like a dying clock, and when all of the hands had finally ceased their movements, I buried my wet face in her hair and a weak sob leaked from me. I was exhausted, I was ashamed, and I was certain that the last happy moment of my life had slipped past me, masquarding as a wonderfully crafted mistake.

Somewhere, a phone rang.