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She's got to start with the fact that she's dead - the insecure drug-addicted mother of two who lost all fights today and died.
That's the impetus for Narcissi to get out of bed at god knows what time in the morning - untouched and naked next to a him.
She wasn't at all sure she was entirely crying over the motherless little girls whose father was behind bars in a South Georgia prison for dealing the drugs that killed their mother.
Let's be honest, she was crying for all little girls and all little boys who took their ball home and gave up and built
the wall.
She didn't know what to do to breach it. It wasn't working trying to be so nice and loving. It wasn't working at all. She felt lonelier than ever beside him, and the pain of that brought up other memories of laying in a bed next to someone she loved who was ... not really there. She didn't know what to do, and was so tired of not knowing what to do.
Last night.
"... I don't know. they believe something like aliens use your body to do some purpose. You know the present is all we have. What's wrong with the present."
"It sounds like you're talking about buddhism."
He rolled his eyes at her again.
(and again)
"the only thing I'll say to you, and I won't keep telling you things like this is that I don't come here just for sex."
She had to take it, or she had to walk away.
It ended up that she tried to cajole a single touch from a human being to give her proof that she herself was worthy of love, but it wasn't coming. She felt the indignity of stroking her own back in the dark and wondering if she just needed to go to her own bed and reckon with the fact that she was miming a lost cause.
"did she break your heart?"
"they all break my heart."
He at almost the entire pizza. She kept talking about the past as if it mattered so much. He kept not talking.
The most she could cling to was that the previous night when he's been blotto, he seemed passionate about touching her body, yet it just didn't seem to be with any intimacy. How as she supposed to get inside and fucking hold someone's hand.
And it wasn't just someone.
It was him that she cared about, and she had to recognize that it was surface. It was light. It was shallow. It was not deepening. There wasn't real comfort in spending a day apart if you couldn't even reach for his hand to stroke. She loved his hands and thought they were so beautiful. Last night she had taken a photo of his hand - not on her knee - but on his own knee next to hers.
And meanwhile mothers were dying.
again and again.
The drugs didn't kill their pain.
The world was burning up around her and she no longer heard the music and couldn't find a chair.
It sucked, and she woke up again and again hoping that she could somehow fit a narrative where she could be the heroine who received love.
All the little things that she put out to try and show that she cared... none of it really mattered. She grabbed his ball out of the yellow coffee mug and put it over her head in the three a.m. torpor of a house where no one can sleep.
Much of her hoped that he even noticed that she was unsatisfied with being untouched. It frustrated the fuck out of her. Instead, she heard the soft sounds of his gentle snoring. She was pleased he could sleep. It was sadder when they both were side by side unable to sleep.
She was going to take a pill and fuck it.
No matter what, she had to remember that while she was always alone... it had to be good company. She had to somehow think that she was enough.
Otherwise, it sucked.
Meanwhile, other daughters also wept.
She wasn't going to save anyone with her caring. She wasn't going to win any medals. The most she could do would be try to go to sleep and quell the bitter taste.
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