The Quiet Narcissist

She’s just a ghost now, an unnamed reason for disconnection. I used to think of that thing she used to do in bed while I was in your bed, and I wondered if maybe that was in poor taste. You probably thought about what Melissa did in bed when you were just about to drift off, too, I thought as I rolled over and looked at you sleeping. Your arm was around my middle and I couldn't tell if you did this because you liked holding me or because you felt that it was what people did when they were sleeping in the same bed. I wanted to tell you I wouldn’t be offended if you didn’t touch me but I didn’t want to disrupt you. Your eyes lolled around slowly like you were dreaming of mundane things. Maybe you were dreaming about being in bed with her. I smiled.

When we first met, I used to throw stones at your bedroom window in the mornings after your mom had left for work. You’d come bounding down the stairs to open the front door for me and we’d crawl like starved hyenas back into bed. Sometimes the birds outside would chirp, and you’d sleepily ask if it was cold outside. “Honey..” you’d start. “What if they catch a chill?”

You didn’t ask me these things as the sun rose anymore, that second time around. Perhaps it was because you didn’t love me anymore. That and there were remarkably less birds to listen to at your apartment downtown. The trucks heaved off the highway like pregnant sighs and I held my breath without any good reason.

I wanted to tell you that I’m not easily offended these days and that you don’t have to dance like autumn leaves around my feet anymore. Sometimes you reached for me under the table and smiled, and sometimes you did not. I realized that to outsiders just meeting us for the first time, we were that comfortable old couple laughing at things that no one else hears – I realized that and thought that you did too. Whether it was a comfort to you as it was to me, I couldn’t be sure. We skulked around like hungry lions, ashamed of our ribcages and though the quiet narcissist sleeps soundly without me, you must have smelled her on me and sensed how that has affected me.

I waited then with dilated pupils and the patience of a predator.

I needed you to evolve, to rise up to meet me where I sat with my palm on my belly, wondered if it would ever matter what we felt or if we would always walk these ancient paths with sardonic fingers until one of us got bored, or angry. I rose alone six days a week and on the seventh day, I floated out of bed knowing that the night was short only in the innate way that nights sometimes were, when spent next to someone else. I couldn’t exist in any other design than I did, then. Could you?

I left before you had a chance to let go of my waist, before you opened your eyes and noticed that it’s my body next to you, keeping you warm. I drove to work silently, anxious, and when I reached the town line I waved at the police officer sitting in his cruiser, waiting to pull people over, like some sort of scavenging hyena...



with love and squalor,
ekw